


III. Rondo: Allegretto Moderato

by Ghostcat



Series: Piano Sonata in G Major, "Pense-bête" [2]
Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: 1980s, Brooklyn, Canon Bisexual Character, Choices, Classical Music, Elio Plays The Piano, Explicit Language, Feelings, First Love, Français | French, I can't believe I had to tag that, Intimacy, Longing, Lost Love, Lust, M/M, Masturbation, Memory, Morality, Music, Musician!Elio, POV Elio Perlman, POV First Person, Recreational Drug Use, Reunions, Romance, Romantic Tension, Self-Cockblocking, Sexual Humor, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, Some angst, Some comedy, Spoilers for Armance, Talking, Weather-related hijinks, remembering, some novel canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-19
Packaged: 2019-04-20 09:49:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 32,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14258331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghostcat/pseuds/Ghostcat
Summary: It's December 7, 1989 in New York City. Elio Perlman sees Oliver for the first time in six years and invites him back to his.(COMPLETE as of 4/19/18)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a continuation of II. Andante.
> 
> The Pense-bête series is primarily based on movie canon--so Fontanile Quarantina rather than Monet's Berm--but relies on novel canon as well, so while we are not in Ghost Spots territory, there is some borrowing of elements in that section.
> 
> This story is based off of sonata structure and part three is the "recapitulation" section.
> 
> There is a roll-over feature for the non-English language dialogue. Just roll over it with your mouse and the translation will pop up. I don't believe this works on mobile, but it should work elsewhere.

   “ _Soon._ ” The answer, the promise, the sweetness of its certainty.

   A reassurance. From my mouth to his ears. Not now, but any minute now. Not later but almost. Soon.

   That extra vowel prolongs the feeling of anticipation—a coo, a kiss, puckered lips approaching other lips or soft, bare skin; the expectation of arrival, not quite at the doorstep but near; close by. A houseguest that’s meant to arrive that day, the sound of car wheels on a gravel drive, my name called from the main floor to come and say hello.

   Soon.

   It is a beautiful word, when meant.

   Soon I’ll be almost-home and Oliver will be with me.

   Driving was a good idea. It keeps nervous hands occupied, eyes on the road. And yet all I want to do is stare at you, Oliver, right there in the passenger seat, as solid as anything, not a recurring dream. Not the one where I’m riding my bike to Fontanile Quarantina and you’re right behind me, always overtaking but then disappearing at the bend of the road where the trees obscure the path ahead.

   I hate that dream.

   I want to put my hand on his leg, slide my hand up to his cock, because of course he’s hard, he has to be, keep driving, left hand on the steering wheel only, wild-eyed and giddy, getting him off through his dress pants, quick and fast. It would be like doing it to myself only better.

   I want to keep my hands to myself and ask questions about his life, impress him with my sangfroid. Demonstrate how I’ve learned to not give everything away when someone looks me in the eye.

   I want to enjoy this liminal quiet where nothing needs to be said. Or resolved.

   Oliver sings along to the radio, as soft as air. He used to sing to me, broad and operatic, as a joke, the way people with lovely voices do sometimes to hide their talents, make it comedy, because to do so truthfully is to reveal something.

   He sang softly to me too, once, as he held me and said goodbye.

   Oliver is here and I want to scream it out the window at the cars driving alongside.

   Oliver is here and I can think of him and see him simultaneously. He can exist as he is; six years older in his camel hair coat, blue suit, polished shoes, buttoned-up yet pliant, singing, his long fingers touching the car window.

   “I didn’t even know this song had words,” I say and in my rush to speak, it comes off breathless and hesitant instead of as intended: blithe, glissando-smooth.

   He grins at me with half-lidded eyes, as relaxed as a big cat. “Yeah, neither did I. I saw them play a year ago and I’m pretty sure I have permanent hearing loss from the experience.”

   “So, not good, then?”

   “No, it was good. Different. But good.”

   Oliver went to rock concerts. Oliver enjoyed himself. Did he go with his wife? Her fingers in her ears to block out the layers of feedback? Did they leave their child at home with a nanny? Was there dinner beforehand, at some dimly lit, adult restaurant? Did he dance? Smiling as he lost tone after tone from the ear-assault? Or did he go alone? Did he go alone and leave with someone else? Is it that?

   It’s hard to picture. Either Oliver is dozing in the grass, shirt open, Star of David shining, skin smelling of suntan lotion, or he is living a gray life of adulthood. He couldn’t be at something so youthful as a concert. He’s thirty now. He has a _child_.

   “It's not a regular occurrence. I went with a colleague,” he says, as if he’d heard my questions and chose to answer only the ones that would lead to more of them.

   I am jealous of every possible explanation.

   A yellow taxi takes the opportunity to cut me off and I let loose in the most vicious torrent of Italian I can summon.

   “I bet he’s scared,” he says, as droll as ever.

   I want to pull his hair hard, make his eyes water and his mouth fall open.

   “What’s in the bag?”

   He looks to the backseat as if reminding himself. “Oh. A six-pack.”

   “So you really were headed home.”

   “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”

   I wonder if kidnapping is a federal offense.

   “We should be there soon.”

   “Soon,” he repeats to himself. The way he says it, gentle and nearly-shy, takes me back to when it was four minutes to midnight and the wait seemed endless.

   I’m still wearing his scarf and somehow or other, the corner end is in my mouth. It smells of him and I’m already trying to put him inside. I pull out the wet tip, and wipe my mouth unobtrusively, glancing over to see if he’s noticed. He’s staring out the window at the night-clouds.

   “I’ve never let anyone drive this car.”

   “I’ll try not to crash.”

   He smiles with his eyes closed and he is too beautiful to be believed.

   Would it be so terrible? To crash. Right then and there on the Brooklyn Bridge, spinning out and falling over the side into the East River like a toy boat in a bathtub. An accident taking us both before anything could happen. Or nothing.

   Both possibilities carry their own kind of misery—keeping that distance and aching for him, or seeing something through that perhaps wasn’t meant to go past a charmed, fixed point.

   Because I’ve thought about it. What Oliver and I had was sheltered from all sides. The golden glow of summer, the support of my parents, the freedom of our hours and health, so much health—it was easy. No one shouted at us in the street, or beat us up for walking hand in hand. We weren’t disowned or jailed. There was no accident at the end of it all to remind us that someone had to pay for all that bliss. Nobody woke up months later with a bruise on their arm that wasn’t a bruise at all, but an internal revolt. Our bodies didn’t disappear faster than we could walk.

   Could it have flourished as it did, if we’d had other obstacles to contend with besides time, rushing in, just when we were beginning to savor it, impossible to ignore or cheat when there it was, always present, ticking silently, minute hand moving, strapped tight to our wrists? Perhaps that’s the wrong question.

   No one died that summer, but I was born. Before that time, I was one thing and then I became another, through him. With him. More Elio than I even knew I could be, but also Oliver, because he became a part of me. Which is why folded deep inside my elation, there is a touch of situational dissonance. Because Oliver couldn’t exist both inside me and right next to me. He wasn’t supposed to keep going without me. That turn in the road had been real, after all.

   The sky is light enough for it to be a bright night and as we go down Atlantic towards my neighborhood, three or four cars zoom past. They’re all blaring Rob Base and DJ EZ-Rock’s ‘It Takes Two’, at subtly different points, creating a scattershot effect like the noise from a pinball machine.

   Oliver hisses through his teeth. “I hear that squealing refrain from passing cars constantly. Then, with the attendant Doppler effect, forget it. My summer nightmare.”

   “I like it. It’s good to dance to.”

   “You don’t find it irritatingly repetitive?”

   His voice. I’d missed it. Low and intimate. Even now in this nothing conversation, expressing dissent, it sounds like he’s kissing my neck.

   I shift in my seat, eyes trained ahead. “Sure, most dance songs are.”

   There’s a spot right in front of my house, one of a series of attached and semi-attached Brooklyn brownstones on a narrow little tree-lined street. I pull forward and shift into reverse, backing into it easily. A little further down the block, three men smoke cigarettes and huddle together, a boombox at their feet. We nod at one another and exchange hellos. Oliver gets out, stands back by the car, plastic bag in hand.

   “Is Lady going to be okay?” he whispers to me as I go past him to my stoop stairs.

   “Probably not.”

   She’ll be fine, but seeing him worried tickles me. I almost smile. Almost.

   Oliver catches my struggle. “If my beloved car isn’t here when I take my leave of you, I…” He trails off, his threat evaporating like a question without an agreed-upon answer.

   His ‘leave’. I very nearly want it. Him to go right back to Manhattan and return to me that old feeling of abandonment, newly-fresh and nearly pleasurable, so I can rub the loss of him all over myself once more. I regard him, hands fisted in my coat pockets, almost willing it, and he breaks away, laughing silently, punching my shoulder, a feather-soft afterthought.

   We go through the front door and stand in the dark of the vestibule, keys in hand at the second lock, Oliver at my back. Is he standing this close for my benefit? Letting me feel the heat of his presence so that I can relearn and respond? I turn around and squint at his velvety silhouette; backlit by the streetlight outside, long curling lashes and hair and hesitation as he looks down and shifts on his feet, the bag in his hand rustling. Supposing I kneel and suck him off right here, in semi-public, his large hands spread on the door frame, breath fogging up the glass window panels…

   “El-“

   “Sorry, I spaced out,” I mumble, turning back to open the second door quickly before he can get to the ‘o’ in my name.

   Oliver wipes his feet in the foyer doormat and I turn on the lights. He sees the built-in ornamental mirror, his eyes travel over the gilded frame and I know he wants to touch it.

   “Go ahead.”

   “Yeah?”

   “It was restored.”

   I untie my shoes and sneak a glance at him as he fingers the filigree on the corners. How the strong line of his shoulders is exaggerated by the fit of his coat; that beard, precise and trim, a darker shade of blond than the hair on his head; the way he sets his mouth as he takes in the details—pressing his lips together and eyes, cool and assessing, cataloging every detail.

   I like him like this—when he doesn’t know he’s being observed; there’s no performance in those unguarded moments. It makes him vulnerable and the need to protect him from me feels more acute.

   But I will not protect him. Not tonight. I place my shoes near the heating vent in the living room.

   Our eyes meet in the mirror.

   “How did you wind up with this place?”

   I leap over, looking at our joint reflection, side-by-side. Like this, we could be actors in a film still, suspended in a dramatic moment of indecision.

   “My aunt’s husband buys and sells property… this house was abandoned for years.” I face him, tipping my head back on the mirror’s surface. “I think it might’ve been a crack den.”

   The frame on my side is bent—the one flaw the restoration missed—and I push at it idly, my shoulders balancing the rest of my body, which tilts towards him, because that’s where it wants to go. It takes me a few seconds to realize I’m posing, like I’m on offer. Judging by his slow appraisal, it takes him less. The moment stretches out like complicity, the sloppy wet kiss of it.

   Oliver breaks eye contact first, turning towards the living room, his voice resonant in the near-empty space. “Because you live in a poor, underserved neighborhood.”

   Hardly. Yes, there is poverty. And corners to avoid. But whenever I return here, the feeling of never quite being able to settle that follows me from city to city dims to a hush. It doesn’t go away completely, but since there is no history to this place save my own, it could. It might. If only.

   I follow Oliver to the living room, which just holds my piano at the moment. He approaches the Wissner Grand with a kind of reverence—if he’d been carrying a hat, he would’ve removed it. As always, he needs permission before engaging, so I nod my assent, and he gently places his hand on the lid.

   “I don’t get it,” he says, finally, rotating his shoulders to face me at an exaggeratedly inquisitive angle. “Why aren’t you in the city? I’m surprised your management hasn’t insisted on it.”

   “I like the—”

   “The peace and quiet. Yes, you said. Because sirens are so peaceful and quiet.”

   There’s a crackle of fireworks outside, which is probably gunfire.

   “Stay away from the windows,” I say, leggierissimo-light.

   He bites the inside of his cheek pensively and I remember that expression, as bright and hot as noon-sun streaming into my grandfather’s bedroom—he’s about to bluff. “Why not move up where I am?”

   So I can fuck you when your wife’s at the spa, Oliver? Show up between noon and two PM to yank your hair and make you remember that you are father, brother, lover, son, husband only to me?

   And, right after thinking it, I feel uncharitable. Turned-on. Guilty. Because I would agree to the arrangement in a minute.

   “I can’t hop on the subway in Connecticut,” I say, feigning a cosmopolitan air as if I were always out and about, going to events, meeting friends and would never deign to live in the suburbs.

   He smiles crookedly. “So you know where I live.”

   We stare at each other for a moment, then I look away. “Ah. So who is tricking who now?”

   Oliver laughs. “I wanted to know if you were keeping tabs on me.”

   “Keeping tabs on you?” I shake my head solemnly. “No.”

   I take his grocery bag and walk towards the back of the house, past the formerly empty sitting area which now has a couch and two armchairs in complimentary shades of blue. When I look back, he’s still in the same spot, staring at my grandmother’s piano.

   His head snaps up. “Should I take my shoes off?”

   “If you like.”

   He kneels to untie his shoes and places them neatly next to mine, taking additional time to straighten them with the tips of his fingers. I love that too, his exactness.

   When Oliver arrives in the kitchen, I am putting his beers in the fridge, the bottles pinging sharply as they hit one another. “Do you want one of these now?”

   “Hmm. No thanks.” He shakes his head. “Maybe later.”

   I shut the fridge door firmly.

   “I’ve read your books; your current author’s bio states that you live in Connecticut. That’s how I knew.”

   He scratches his beard. “What did you think?”

   “About your books? Which one? All of them?”

   “You’ve read all of them?” He crosses his arms, as if daring me to say yes when he knows very well it’s yes.

   “It’s not as if you have millions. I liked the last one, the Stoicism book. It was… surprising.”

   “How so?”

   Is this a test? He’s focusing all of his attention on me and that in itself is a test. Can I keep to my side of the room, maintain appropriate eye contact, not lick my lips. Pass, almost pass, fail. My tongue sticks to the corner of my lips, a nervous habit.

   “The social aspect. Our obligation to our communities through service. Surprising because of how accessible the message is, and modern. I like your approach, too. It’s less academic journalese and more… novelistic. I thoroughly enjoyed it.”

   He looks down at his feet, then up again, bashful, biting his lips nervously as if he’s trying not to smile. His eyes are a warmer blue tonight. They contrast with the paler blue of the wall he stands against, hands in his pockets and altogether lovely.

   “Thank you. Believe it or not, I learned a lot from your father’s dinner drudges. Being able to explain my research so that any layman could comprehend it was probably the most valuable academic advice I have ever received. It made me work harder on my writing, that’s for sure.”

   There’s a closed-off fireplace against the wall and he leans on it, gripping the edge of the mantel, peering at a framed photo of Lady Wynne and I sharing cake at her wedding. I am barely recognizable in it; tuxedoed, hair even longer, and laughing so hard, my eyes are slits.

   “The stunning Marzia. She made quite a match. Still friends, huh?”

   “Friends for life.” More than that, if possible. I change the subject. “I read about your projects in community volunteerism. Sounds impressive.”

   Another photo—my parents at a party, years before they had me. Mother has a perm and Papa is beardless, giving him the appearance of a sweet, startled baby. Oliver picks it up, smiles, and puts it back down.

   “Yes. Though I admit I struggled with it at first. Before I decided to branch out into applied, collaborative work, it was more of a personal experiment.”

   “Why did you struggle?”

   “Because I thought I was doing it more for my personal benefit than for the greater good. Like I had something to prove to myself. And then I had to get over whether or not that negated the service.”

   “Of course not, the service is greater than the motives. You probably thought you weren’t making much of a contribution.”

   “Yes,” he says, sheepishly.

   “But you know now that you were.”

   “Yes.” His answer is quiet, not quite a whisper. An admission, then. Oliver picks up another photo—Dafna and I as children. She’s dressed as a cowboy, I’m a cat, mouth open in a hiss.

   “You think too much.”

   He smiles at me over his shoulder. “Coming from you, I feel like I should be flattered.” Oliver gestures to the photo with his thumb. “Are you the kitten?”

   I nod, extending my arm and gesturing back out to the hall. “Lets hang up your coat. Come. I want to hear more about your applied work.”

   We walk to the hall closet where I help him remove his coat. He doesn’t need assistance, but it calms me to touch him without expectation.

   “Do you want me to hang up your suit jacket as well?”

   “Sure,” he says unbuttoning his jacket, revealing a slim cashmere v-neck sweater over a white shirt, that both fit him like bespoke items. I concentrate on what he is saying so I don’t reach out and touch like some kind of sex-starved widower.

   “ ...so then a few of my colleagues and I decided to do a collaboration with a team at NYU. We work with various city agencies—recruiting low-income candidates from the five boroughs to do volunteer work that’s somewhat subsidized. All in sneaky accordance with Stoic principle.”

   I motion back to the kitchen, stopping briefly to adjust the thermostat. “Subsidized? But doesn’t that defeat the purpose of volunteerism? To pay people for it?”

   “It’s not enough to be payment,” he counters. “And what is the true purpose of volunteerism? To help others.”

   His arms stretch over his head, a sly grin on his face. I know he’s thinking about what I said regarding service. Oliver could always always follow my train of thought because it invariably aligned with his. The usurper turned conspirator. I follow the circular movement of his wrists, fists in the air, then his fingers, hand spread wide.

   “The project funds make it possible for participants to be altruistic, which is, sadly, a luxury sometimes. You have to understand, a lot of these folks have obligations at home, financial or attention-based. The program makes it possible for them to justify volunteerism in their lives.”

   I adore how he moves his hands when he speaks, how he engages in the things he loves and how he relates that love. I want to be part of that exaltation. This isn’t lust, though the feeling can feed lust, but a greater identification—let my hands be your hands, let me into that love.

   Bringing Oliver back here wasn’t a test, it was a certainty. As soon as I saw him standing in that hallway—coat folded over his arm, program-in-hand, formal and gorgeous—a moribund part of me that doesn’t give a fuck about consequence awoke and said: he can be yours again and will be. But to think that way meant forgetting, no, _ignoring_ his goodness. Presuming that he’d succumb, that he could cease to be good.

   Listening to him speak about this new project—the service to others, benevolent obligation, strengthening of communities—with such passion renders my little fantasy implausible. He would never forget himself, because not only is he good, he loves his goodness.

   I love it as well.

   This was one of his many ways into me, that sense of loving something outside of yourself so much that all you want to do is share it—and now I seek that generosity in everyone I care to truly know, friend or lover. It’s the first thing I look for; the hook.

   It’s odd to be, once again, face to face with the source of that requirement.

   “We find that many continue their work even after they’re done with their assignment.”

   “Right.”

   Silence settles between us and I want to embrace him, the kind of embrace that a child gives their mother after having lost sight of her for too long. Gratitude and tears and terror and joy and a need to never leave their side.

   Oliver puts his hand on my shoulder, squeezing it. I do not swoon. I hold his gaze. I smile, even. He moves away, and is instantly missed.

   “Altruism doesn’t always begin at home. It has to start somewhere, right?”

   I clap. He starts a little, shifting from earnest lecture mode to something like diffidence.

   “I think it’s wonderful.”

   “Really?” He bites his thumbnail, waiting. “You think so?”

   “You’re not just writing for academics or thinking for academics. You’re thinking bigger. This is why your books sell.”

   “Because they’re dumbed-down lessons on living life via classical philosophy, and I’m a hack who basically writes highbrow how-to books?”

   “Because it’s practical, applied philosophy.”

   He looks at me with a touching degree of disbelief and I continue in a rush, “I’ve never understood why the application of ideas is so often viewed as drudgery. Publishing in academic journals is all well and good but it takes forever to get anywhere important.”

   “Articles get seen by peers. Publishing helps careers.”

   “Anyone can have ideas but doing something with those ideas? That’s an altogether rarer thing. A-a-a-nd much more important. You’re doing that.”

   Oliver purses his lips, then exhales through them slowly. “As always, Elio, you’re way too kind to me.”

   “Kind? Hardly.”

   “Yes. Always.”

   He shrugs and unbuttons his sleeves, rolling them up carefully. There are his knobby wrists, I liked to lick my way around them, then mouth the smooth, hairless underbelly of his arm all the way up to the crook of his elbow. I liked all of him in my mouth, but especially the parts of him he’d never consider.

   “Are you tenure-track?” I move around to the sink, partly to rinse the dishes and wash my hands, partly to justify the barrier between us. He nods.

   “They wanted young blood in the department and having a respected book in the field helped. I’ll be up for it soon, I don’t foresee any problems.”

   Some people need extra prodding.

   “More than one book, no? And you’re an in-demand speaker, as well.”

   “Yes,” he says slowly, leaning on the granite countertop. “Have you ever—”

   “No.” I don’t tell him about all the times I wanted to, almost did, but ultimately, didn’t. “I bet you still remember my father’s advice on how to negotiate an excellent retention package.”

   He laughs, shaking his head. It pleases, to be responsible for that sound.

   “I get offers. Brown made me a nice one recently. But for now, I love working in the city. Don’t tell Columbia that.” He walks his fingers to the decorative bowl of green apples, taking two and juggling them lazily. “I’m giving a distinguished lecture at Oxford in March.”

   “Wow. And at such a young age.”

   He tosses the apples back in the bowl. “Are you fucking with me?”

   “No.”

   To be clear, I am fucking with him. My eyes might be too wide and too guileless to pass as innocent because in two strides, Oliver is on my side of the counter, poking me with the line of his fingertips at the tender juncture between shoulder and collarbone, hard.

   It doesn’t completely surprise; a part of me expected it because I provoked it, cold-bloodedly, knowing it wouldn’t take much to move him. What does surprise is how fucking good it feels. Longed-for, wanted, returned to myself. A jab in play fight and I’m his.

   There isn’t enough distance between us so while I hold out my left arm, in case he attacks again, my face won’t behave. Because he is close enough to have to tilt my chin up and I’m trying not to say his name in exactly the wrong way.

   “Hey. That hurt.” I rub the sore spot with my free hand.

   “Don’t be a baby.”

   He touches me again—a swat at my arm, then a shove, softer now, the palm of his hand to my right pectoral. I fall back but grab his arm, and then the other, pushing against his attack. Initially, our arms create a divide between us, a bridge of limbs, but elbows bend and so do bodies and soon enough we’re folding into each other as we fight, carefully moving our heads so as not to collide; chin to chin, cheek to cheek, the hard hit of our upper arms. We wrestle and for him, it hardly seems like effort, but I can feel the heat on my face like a fire and he laughs as my grunts turn to groans. I’m out of breath and folding in on myself, hoping his fingers won’t find their way between my legs. But also thinking, yes, do.

   The phone rings and we jump back; a foot of space between us. It is familiar and exhilarating and altogether not on board, as my father might say.

   “Sorry,” I say, smoothing down my dress pants. “Let me get that.”

   I walk past him, flicking him in on the chest on the way and nearly starting another war, grabbing the phone with a warning look. “Hello?”

   “Hi, man. It’s Bobby.”

   I turn my back to Oliver. “Hey. What’s up?”

   Bobby’s slow-voweled Brooklynese is usually a pleasure to listen to; tonight it’s manic and nasally high, limned with anxiety. “Listen, I came over earlier to be there when the furniture guys came but I didn’t notice that they didn’t put your bed together until after they left.”

   “I see.”

   “Sorry about that, can you sleep in one of the spare bedrooms tonight? I’ll have someone over tomorrow afternoon to finish up. I know you're leaving, but at least you’ll be all set for later this month. I’m sorry.”

   “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be fine with my mattress on the floor. Good night, Bobby.”

   “Night. Hey, Elio,” he pauses, before lowering his voice. “Don’t tell D, she’ll kill me.”

   So that’s the real reason he called. I roll my eyes. “I won’t. Bye.”

   I spin back to Oliver and he’s scowling, mouth puckered in thought, staring at the floor. He looks up. “Do you mind if I make a phone call?”

   “Yes please, go ahead. Hang up for me.”

   Oliver puts his finger down on the hook and holds his hand out for the receiver. “Thanks.”

   He cradles the receiver on his shoulder and pulls out his wallet, removing a business card. “It’s long distance. Let me know how much it is when you get the bill and I’ll pay you back.”

   “Don’t worry about it.”

   “It won’t be long.”

   Oliver spies another photo, unframed, next to the phone. Distractedly, he hangs up and puts his finger on the edge, rotating it for a better look. Lina on our balcony in Paris, smoking a cigarette and wearing a fake fur coat as a robe. She is nude underneath, not that there’s any way to tell. She stares straight at the lens the usual way she stares at me, since I am the one who took the photo. Which means she stares at him as if he were me and I wonder if he knows about her, about us.

   “Do you need privacy?” I say, pointedly.

   Oliver mulls it over. “No. Stay.”

   I nod and search for a wine opener. Dafna has stocked the wine rack with a varied selection of reds and I opt for the Margaux Bordeaux. I pour myself a glass, large, but not so large I could make a fool of myself. He dials slowly, consulting the card, and waits, his shadow on the wall like a sequence of stacked-together ovals and rectangles.

   “Hi Rachel, it’s Ollie.”

 _Ollie._ Is that who he is when he’s at home? I try the nickname in my mouth without saying it out loud. Ollie. Elio. It’s practically the same, save the extra L. There for what? A tongue connecting one to the other, a long trail of saliva.

   “Is Ben still up? I wanted to say goodnight.” Oliver puts a hand on the wall as he talks. His wrists, slender and knobby, are a stark contrast to his large hands. “Good. Thanks.”

   “Hi, Buddy.”

   Oliver’s back is to me but I can hear the smile in his voice, the tired and warm stretch of it. He plays with the cord.

   “You sound sleepy. You’re going to bed?”

   I’m eavesdropping so I busy myself with getting another empty wine glass, in case he wants one. Checking the refrigerator to see if there’s ice for water.

   “That’s amazing. Listen, I’ve got one saved for you. Why should you never play cards in the Serengeti?” He pauses. “Because of the cheetahs.”

   I can hear a shriek from the other end of the line, all the way across the room, and Oliver laughs, throwing his head back.

   “Okay, time for bed. Daddy will call you tomorrow. I love you.”

   Having finished the first glass, I pour another with an unsteady hand. He hangs the phone back it its cradle gently.

   “Thanks. I always call him before bed. I save up jokes for him, it’s kind of our thing.”

   “Sure.” I know I should ask questions but I can’t.

   “So, who’s Bobby?”

   When he crosses his arms he holds his elbows and, because he’s imposing, a casual observer wouldn’t see how self-protective that gesture is. Like he’s holding himself together. Does he think Bobby is something to me? Probably. If I were inclined to toy with him, I would stay silent, smile, cross my arms too but with a difference—defiance, not defensiveness. His voice loses its depth when he’s nervous.

   “Dafna’s significant other. He takes care of the house sometimes. He’s nice enough, though I worry…”

   “Worry about what?” He pats his pockets. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

   “Not at all.” I open the cupboards looking for an ashtray, one after the other. There’s enough plates for a dozen dinner parties. I can’t think of the last time I ate off a plate at home. “Sorry. I’m trying to find an ashtray.”

   Oliver joins me in the search, opening and closing the glass china cabinets. “You have a lot of glassware.”

   “I really don’t know why. I only have one or two guests at a time,” I say with a laugh, and immediately regret it. He doesn’t respond, he’s on his tiptoes, his socks are gray and when he reaches, I can see his bare ankles. And, like a tremulous hero in a 19th century romance novel, I gawp at the sight of them.

   “Bingo.” Oliver fishes out a massive glass ashtray over his head, fingers tented. He sets it down on the counter like a sacred object. “This thing is wild… oh. What have we here?”

   I peer over his shoulder and nearly rest my chin there. “What is it?”

   “Someone left you a present.” He lifts a tightly wrapped baggie of marijuana and brings it up to his nose. “Mmm. Hello.”

   “Gimme.” I reach for it and he lifts it overhead.

   “Did you know this was there?”

   “No. But I knew it was somewhere.”

   He scowl-smiles, shaking his head. “What does that mean?”

   I roll my eyes. “I asked Dafna to get some for me.”

   “You’re kidding.”

   I jump for the bag and he slides back, holding his find high in the air, cackling. “Unbelievable. You asked serious, caring, clearly-rule-abiding Dafna to procure _drugs_ for you? You really are a _dissoluto assoluto_.”

   “Don’t call me that.” I can’t believe he remembers.

   Oliver evades me with a fast feint to the right, then left. “Don’t get me wrong, I love it. But you know it’s terrible.”

   He backs up against the wall and unties the turquoise ribbon around the baggie, holding it up to the light and peering at the contents. “Don’t come any closer, Elio, or I’m taking this fine stuff with me.”

   I stop, change tactics. “Do you want to try it? It’s from Alaska. It’s supposed to be amazing. Near-hallucinogenic.”

   “Mmm, I’d like to.” Oliver sniffs it again before tossing the bag at my chest, I clutch it one-handed. “But I have to drive home at some point and if this is as good as you say, I might wind up in Nebraska.”

   I have no idea what’s in Nebraska, other than state troopers and Bruce Springsteen albums and flatness. But I'd go with him. I’d go anywhere he went. I haven’t thought that about anyone.

   I trudge over to the dining room table, put the baggie down, and sink down on the bench seat, leaning forward, elbows on my thighs. I don’t know what I’m doing and he can see right through me. Anyone could.

   “I like this open plan thing you’ve got going with the kitchen and dining room. That high end picnic table is a nice touch. Communal.”

   Empty conversation about decor is past my abilities at this time. I rest my head on my lap and drop my arms, letting my hands skim the floor.

   “You alright?”

   “Uh-huh. Just stretching. Long day.”

   Oliver sits on the other side of the table, plunking down the giant ashtray. “Do you want a cigarette?”

   “Yes, please.”

   I sit up, swing my legs over the bench to face him, he gives me a cigarette and leans over to light it for me.

   “Thanks.”

   “So Bobby and Dafna… you’re worried?”

   I lean on my hand and inhale deeply, blowing out the smoke in between my words. “That he’s not as curious as she is. She’ll tire of him and won’t be able to leave because she is dutiful.”

   Oliver taps his cigarette on the ashtray. “Hmm. Have you shared this opinion with her?”

   “No,” I say, with a short laugh.

   “Because she’ll never speak to you again, because you’re an asshole who should stay out of her business?”

   “Correct.”

   Oliver touches the mirror-work embroidery adorning the runner on the dining room table.

   “Abhla Bharat.”

   “Excuse me?”

   He points at the table. “Your table runner—all those mirrored pieces sewn into the fabric. I first saw these when I was traveling in Delhi. Did Dafna do what little decoration is in this place… and recently?”

   “What makes you say that?”

   “Because if it had been you that chose it, you would have already given me the entire history of this kind of textile work and its symbolism.”

   I shrug, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of being right.

   “Also, before, when you walked past your sitting area, you seemed confused—as if you’d never seen those blue armchairs before.”

   He’s right, I hadn’t. What else had he seen about me in so little time? What was he seeing about me now? With my careful politeness and feeble grasp on cool? Did he know what I had in mind? Earlier, in the space of a two-block walk to his car, I’d decided to pretend he had no other life but the one he is having right now, as my first love only, in my house, all alone, no connections. A sometime-invert far from home.

   “Not here much, huh?” he says, in a kindly tone that isn’t meant patronizingly but feels as if it were.

   “Three or four times a year. This was a quick stop,” I explain, sitting up straight, and attempting to reclaim myself as the (mostly) responsible, professional adult I’ve become. “Tonight was a contractual obligation, it’s a public arts thing I’m a part of. I have to do at least three of those a year. I’d like to be here for longer stretches and who knows? I just might be.”

   I’m not sure what possessed me to say that. It’s not true. And yet, now that it’s been said out loud, to him, it may as well be a promise.

   “Will you?”

   His hands are clasped in front of him. I had him face down in my sheets, with their happy pattern of yellow hearts, his hands just like that, knuckles hitting the headboard, containing himself, and I’d stopped moving, told him to unfurl them so I could slide my fingers through. He did and when I moved again, a wave on top of another wave, hips slick, his moan was a sigh; timid and small and precious.

   I am suddenly too tired to sit there smiling and spewing any more not-so-harmless nonsense.

   “I’m, uh, going to go change. Please have some of this Bordeaux. It’s delicious.”

   Halfway up the stairs, he calls from below. “Listen, Elio. Let me know if you need me out of your hair.”

   Out of my hair. What an expression. He is in my hair, mouth, hands, heart, balls, everywhere.

   His face is half-hidden in shadow at the bottom of the stairs.

   “Don’t be silly. I wouldn’t have asked you over if I didn’t want you here. If you still want to watch the fight, the television is in the sitting room, in the corner cabinet. It’s not locked.”

   Oliver nods and walks away and I go to my room on autopilot. The mattress sits on the floor, made and bare.

   I change slowly, with a kind of nervous, unassailable hope that he’ll come up the stairs and stand in the doorway, watching. I remove my shirt and pants. A thrill passes over me, arousal, anxiety, and then, disappointment when the reality I’ve envisioned doesn’t materialize. Downstairs, the television blares on and the volume instantly lowers to a hum. Three or four minutes pass and there’s no sound at all. He must have turned it off.

   I wait another five minutes. Silence. He doesn’t appear. He’s not going to.

   More than once, I have been capricious and sometimes careless with others. When I want something, I pursue it, no longer willing to wait for the right moment, the better time, or set of circumstances that will render everything acceptable. And yet, here I am, cowed by the enormity of feeling; unwilling to ask or engage with the situation: Oliver’s presence in my empty house. Family out of town. One couldn’t ask for more clarity. He knows me, knows what I’m likely to do. I’ll say: come upstairs, stay downstairs, it doesn’t matter. Get on your knees, breathe in my smell, see that I’m hard, you knew I would be, feel it, that’s my desire for you. You can leave when it’s over, I don’t care. If I can forget that there are people outside of this house, in actual life, waiting for me, tomorrow, the day after, then so can you.

   What I am saying, with that special inarticulateness born of frustration, is that I can’t just talk to you, Oliver, and reminisce, because every response of yours is a memory of summer and I need more than that or this: a quick catch-up session of how-are-yous and what-are-you-doings and do-you-recalls.

   There are limits to nostalgia. I need more.

   Perhaps I should just rub one out. It might make me less likely to request a blow job from my guest, certainly.

   The house is too quiet so I turn on the sound system and adjust the volume so that it doesn’t overwhelm the rooms downstairs. I put on sweatpants and a long-sleeved t-shirt, both too big for me, but comforting; the feeling of roominess, of sleeves hanging over thumbs and knuckles, plenty of cotton fabric to bite on when nerves are all there is.

   Play the good host, be energetic, generous, more American than the Americano downstairs. He is your friend only, not here for a Proustian remembrance of fucks past. I splash some water on my face and smile at my reflection, forcing it up to my eyes.

   “Elio,” I say and the name, no longer mine, is a shiver.


	2. Chapter 2

   I bound down the stairs and find him sitting on the new couch in the sitting area. I throw myself into one of the armchairs opposite, landing sideways. He laughs.

   It’s not so hard to smile then.

   “Is it too dark here for you?” I ask.

   “No. It’s perfect.”

   “Game no good?”

   “Boxing match,” he corrects automatically. “And I’m not really in the mood, as it turns out. I’d prefer listening to music.” He stretches out his long legs. “Can you raise the volume?”

   “Sure.” I go find the downstairs remote, raise the volume and come back to my new chair. “There are speakers on every floor. I was adamant about one thing, that I be able to listen to music wherever I am in this place.”

   Oliver listens, eyes closed, fingers moving slightly to the music. “I like this one.”

   With that, he slides his hands down his thighs as if smoothing his pants. It only draws attention to his crotch, and the solid hint of everything on display. I am rapt.

   “The lead singer’s a teenager from Iceland,” I say, licking my lower lip.

   His eyes open. “Really?”

   Luckily, there’s a fuzzy piece of lint on my knee to conveniently pick at and sweep away.

   “Yes, she’s got elfin eyes, matted, grubby hair, and that huge, huge voice. And she’s… sexy. In this completely surprising way. I saw them in London. Blew me away.”

   That was a good night. Melina and I made love for hours and I’d thought there was no one I’d ever like more. No eyes I’d rather get lost in, no mouth, or hip bones I’d rather taste. It was a consummate mix of emotion and sound. I’d forgotten what it could be to forget so completely. And I did, that night, forget and kept forgetting.

   It had gotten better eventually—the daily remembering. Of Oliver and that summer. Until, finally, the involuntary flashes were no longer routine. They would come now and again only—a song or a shade of deep green, someone jumping off a bicycle before it had the chance to stop.

   This is how time heals heartbreak; by parsing out the memories so that eventually even the bittersweet reminder of that loss is greeted like a long-absent friend.

   Oliver smiles at me, soft and distant. “You have to send me a list of things to listen to, I’ve fallen out of the loop.”

   “Sure.”

   But where? To his office or his home? Avoiding his home address seems sordid.

   He crosses his long legs at the ankle. “How do you like living here? You’ve already made friends.”

   I balk. “What do you mean?”

   “The guys down the street. They knew your name.”

   It takes me a minute to understand what he’s talking about. “Oh yeah, well, I play basketball in a park nearby sometimes, so locals know me.”

   “You play basketball?”

   “I play basketball,” I repeat with the same incredulous tone.

   He grins as if I’d just cracked the silliest joke he’d ever heard. “What position?”

   “Point guard.”

   “Ha.” He claps once and leans forward.

   “You play, obviously.”

   “Sure, power forward,” he says, some of that playful stentoriousness creeping back into his voice. How did I ever think he was arrogant? It’s as if, a long time ago, he discovered the bass in his voice could affect people, and rather than use it to intimidate, he poked fun at himself. Not that anyone got the joke. That tone, the looks, the attitude—all of it signaled undeniable rightness. There could be no self-doubt with that presentation.

   “I could out-maneuver you.”

   “Could you, now?” Oliver appears delighted.

   The park players aren’t averse to a dirty trick. They’re skilled and sneaky-smart and I am a quick study. Suddenly, I would like nothing better than to best Oliver at something he thinks he’s good at.

   I stand up. “Yes. I’m fast.”

   “Is there anywhere we can test this braggadocio?” He leans his head back on the loveseat, lolling lazily.

   “Tonight? You want to play a midnight one-on-one game?”

   “Sure. Besides, it’s not midnight yet.”

   I swivel around to hide my face, unable to get the loopy smile out of my voice. “Is that when you take your leave?” May as well use his words.

   “I should go by 11:45 at the latest.”

   He stands. There aren’t many people who can make me feel overwhelmed.

   “I don’t think there are any unpadlocked courts. Climbing fences in a snowstorm is probably a bad idea.”

   “True,” Oliver agrees but briefly appears to consider it anyway, head tilting towards his shoulder. With a sigh, he straightens. “Shame. Some other time, then.”

   We regard one another in the dim light bleeding through from the kitchen and the front hall.

   “Do you have classes tomorrow?”

   “No, just office hours. Though if the storm is really a storm and not an overreaction, probably won’t have those, either.” Oliver glances over my shoulder, and walks past, towards the kitchen windows. “Look, it’s finally started.”

   Outside, the snow falls gently, like a postcard of a mild winter.

   Impulsively, I come up from behind and bump him with my shoulder. “Come on, let me give you a tour of this place,” and motion for him follow me out of the room. He does, hands in pockets, with a studied reluctance.

   We go to the basement and I show him the original brick arches, the spot where I found some antique beer bottles wrapped in newspaper—Prohibition relics. Then we tour the ground floor studio apartment, currently empty. I ask him if any of his grad students would make good tenants and he doesn’t answer, studying the decorative tiles in the kitchen as if he were in a museum.

   Back to the first floor and my piano. I regale him with stories of my grandmother, a famous beauty back in her day, and also a pianist. My piano’s original owner, in fact, and the person who first sat me on her lap and put my hands on its keys.

   “This is the first piano I ever played.”

   Wissner, Brooklyn piano manufacturers that were eventually eclipsed by their more profitable Queens competitors, Steinway, made exquisite-sounding instruments, but went out of business in the ‘40s. Ours is especially ornate, with a curly-scripted satinwood marquetry inlay that isn’t really my aesthetic—and yet, playing it, I hear home.

   Oliver listens attentively and walks around the instrument, touching the path of the decorative inlay with as much care as a caress.

   On the second floor, we have a perfunctory look at each bedroom, sterile and clean as hotels, and Oliver snorts at the sight of the mattress on the floor in mine.

   “I don’t mind.”

   “I bet you don’t,” he says and goes back out in the hallway.

   I have no idea what he means by that and when I go to ask him, I find him examining a decorative, stained-glass-windowed door to a small office I don’t use.

   “This one’s my favorite so far,” he mutters appreciatively, touching a blue glass square, thick and slightly warped by its depth.

   “You can have it.”

   We look at one another through the glass, our faces distorted, teeth longer, more vulpine.

   “Is this the radio?”

   My tongue wants to lick the glass over his lips.

   “No, I have one of those CD changers. I like to put it on random, let it surprise me.”

   “Nice.” Oliver stands, leaning his shoulder on the door frame. He swipes his beard on the edge, as if he’s scratching it, and I don’t know where to look. His mouth, the give of his shoulder, or his eyes that don’t leave mine. He knows himself, he used to say that all the time; does he still? Because I feel I don’t.

   “Come on, one more floor to go.” I run up and he follows, taking the stairs two at a time.

   He surveys the floor-thru space—three large rooms that run from one end of the house to the other, renovated into one huge room—slowly opening and closing the wooden half-shutters on the street-side windows before going to stand at the center, right next to the pièce de résistance.

   “A ping-pong table? Interesting.”

   I push the hair back from my face, nodding. “There used to be a badminton set-up, but Dafna thought it would be a good idea to switch it for this. Learn a new game.”

   He swivels, hands in his pockets. “You’d never played ping-pong?”

   “I’ve played tennis. This is table tennis.”

   Oliver smiles wryly. “It’s not the same thing, Elio.”

   “It’s not the same thing?”

   “No.”

   I know it’s not and I’m an excellent player, but playing the naïf with Oliver is always amusing. “Do you want to play?”

   “Me against you? That wouldn’t be fair.”

   “Try me.”

   “Okay.” Oliver pulls the back of his sweater over his head, his white dress shirt is tucked neatly into his pants; the fit is exacting. He is trim, nothing but clean lines, his back, his chest, the sides of his torso as he stretches. He must still run every morning. My mind has had a tendency to remember him in fragments and seeing him move—all of a piece, his long, loose arms, the buoyancy—is an unexpected bit of joy.

   He peels off his socks.

   I lead myself away from further observations of his body by looking for the paddle and balls, finding them stacked by the windows, next to an antique stand-up ashtray with an empty pack of Camel cigarettes on the edge. I pocket the proof of my frequent time here as he glides up to grab a paddle from my hands, narrowly missing the subterfuge.

   “First one to get 11 points wins.” He sprints back to the table, voice booming in the near-bare room.

   “Fine.”

   He should take off his shirt too so I could see his back.

   We start off slow; I play like I don’t know what I’m doing and let a few balls go by. It’s easy to lose. Oliver’s unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt and there it is—the Star of David on his chest. Between the flash of it as he moves and the sight of his chest hair, I’m at an overwhelming disadvantage. Very quickly we are at three to zero, with Oliver as the victor and I as the pitiable loser.

   But I have a plan. It involves making him feel as comfortable as possible, letting that indulgent smile settle, and then going on the attack. Four to zero. I must be too good an actor because Oliver stops focusing on the play and then, stops playing completely. He sends a dark look my way and, holding his paddle up, laughs one single disbelieving laugh.

   “What the hell are we listening to?”

   “What are we listening to?”

   “Yes, that’s what I said.”

   He hates when I repeat his questions, and I love his irritation. It’s attractive.

   “2 Live Crew.” I get the ball and hit it over and score, because he’s still laughing.

   “This is insane.”

   “You’ve never heard of them? Four to one.”

   Oliver, being Oliver, is captivated by the sound, head cocked like the dog listening to his master’s voice. “This can’t be real.”

   “I know, isn’t it great?”

   “It’s pornographic.” He says ‘pornographic’ in a deliciously indignant way. Like he’s someone’s father.

   Which he is.

   “Eh, well,” I say, assuming a scholarly tone. “That’s a matter of debate. It’s just words and a beat, you’re not watching anything. I don’t think anyone is going to fuck to it either, it’s meant for the dance floor.”

   “Or the strip club.”

   “That’s a kind of dance.”

   Visual aids are always helpful so I demonstrate a measured body roll. Because I am nothing if not exact.

   Oliver is not impressed with my reasoning. We stand there listening and I mouth along to the words, swaying to the bouncy beat.

   “Did he just say he’s—no. ‘I’m a dog in heat’?”

   I nod, finishing the line, “...a freak without warning.”

   “What does that even mean?”

   “It means that you shouldn’t be surprised that he wants to fuck you. He’s horny.”

   “That’s ridiculous.”

   “Why? People fuck.”

   Oliver rubs his palm with the paddle, eyes narrowing, then takes the ball from the table and taps it over. Clean hit, which he returns. We go back and forth until I score another point. Four to two.

   “‘You tell your parents that we’re going out, never to the movies just straight to my house,’” I murmur, before a flurry of quick volleys, and I score another point. “Four to three.”

   We continue, the music scoring our moves, and I’m winning. I just can’t wait. I’ve never been capable.

   “How can you focus with this ridiculous song playing?”

   “Because it’s fun.”

   “Fun?”

   “Fun. Remember fun? Doesn’t this make you want to move?”

   I jump around, half-clowning, half-committed. Dancing to this song is an inevitable outcome, I always respond to the beat.

   “Listen to it. Don’t close yourself off. Feel that. The knees are going, then the hips. You have to jump around and dance, it’s not meant to be a treatise. Well, maybe a little, only in the sense that they’re saying that this is just sex, just fucking, not a love affair. He has an appetite for it, it’s undeniable, why be dishonest? Just move.”

   “I can’t take you or this seriously.”

   “And yet you’re dancing.”

   “No, I’m not.”

   “You’re tapping your foot. And I’m beating you at ‘ping-pong’.” I raise my hands, releasing a _whoop_ of glee.

   He purses his lips and bends a little and when I volley, he swings back with startling ferocity. I meet it and send it back to him, just over the net, lightly, with a single bounce.

   “Come on, Oliver. Let loose and get down. Go ahead. I won’t tell anyone.”

   Another fierce volley, easily intercepted and returned, this time to his far left. He’s not as fast there.

   “Point, me. Again. What’s the score now? Eight to four?”

   “You’re cheating.”

   “How so?”

   “By talking and,” he gestures towards me, “ _dancing_ and using an unfair advantage. You knew how to play, why did you tell me you were a novice?”

   “For amusement?” The truest answer I can offer given that Oliver seems to think my ‘dancing’ might as well be ‘masturbating’ and I want to laugh until I die from it.

   I score another point; Oliver grits his teeth. “I can’t believe you lied.”

   “ _Mmm._ ” Perhaps I should soften the sting. “I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t lie. Maybe I am a novice. Have you considered that perhaps I’m a natural?” I speed up my volleys and Oliver hits the ball hard into his side of the net.

   “Thank you, Signore _Ulliva_! Match point.” I tap my paddle on the table and while I do not laugh or give in to the wiggle of the music, this is what giddiness feels like. And I haven’t won so thoroughly in so long—it’s the kind of winning that has a taste.

   He rallies and manages to score once more, but I get him eventually, with a shallow serve even his long arms can’t reach.

   I jump into the air and run around the floor, arms up in a V for victory, and hop over to shake my opponent’s hand like a true sportsman. Oliver, who has been watching me act the fool with something like grace, puts his sweater back on then grasps my fingers hard enough to wrench me forward so that we’re nearly toe to toe.

   I want to kiss him. It would be the natural thing to do. After all, we’ve done it before. What would be the harm? It’s a kiss.

   Oliver turns his head sharply, straightening. “Is that the phone?”

   “Phone?” I hear it again, distantly, ringing from downstairs. “Fuck!”

   I run like hell two flights down to the kitchen, Oliver hot on my heels, and pick up.

   “Hello?”

   “Mon chérie !” Clem’s voice is a velvety purr, and instinctually, I cover the receiver as she talks.

   “On s’est fait du souci pour toi. Est-ce que ça va ?”

   I put my finger to my lips and Oliver zips his own, widening his eyes in mock-terror. I bite down a laugh and cough. “Désolé. Je suis fatigué, secoué et heureux d’être enfin rentré. Je crois que j’ai de la fièvre.”

   He raises his eyebrows and smiles, canine teeth prominent and sharp.

   “Tu penses que tu vas pouvoir prendre l’avion demain ?”

   Oliver walks slowly around the counter, eyes trained at his feet. It is too considered by a half. _Fuck._

   I straighten involuntarily. “J’espère.”

   “Pauvre poussin. Dafna nous a dit que tu tu n’as pas encore mangé. C’est vrai ?”

   “Oui, mais ça va aller. Je vais commander quelque chose.”

   He raises his hand slowly as if he’s about to point at something just past the window and pokes me on the side, quick and fast, causing me to jerk away and bang against the kitchen island, mouthing a long _ooooow_. Oliver laughs silently, all huffed breaths, when I shove him back.

   “Bien, écoute je voulais te dire que le meeting c’est très bien passé. J’ai réussi à conclure une excellent deal pour le trio. Le deal parfait. Tu vas être ravi.”

   He lunges for me again and this time I stomp on his foot. “Excellentes nouvelle .”

   Oliver hops back, aggrieved, but then his expression changes, determined and sure.

   “Est-ce que Dafna t’as parlé des Grammys ?”

   “Yes, I did and I want to do it—”

   It happens so quickly, I don’t have much time to go into a defensive stance. He slides into my space, one of his arms snaking under my armpit and he tickles my ribcage. My eye is to his as an eye in a keyhole—that near, that open. He’s too close, his mistake, because I lean in and lick the side of his bearded face.

   Breathlessly, I say, “Tell them yes.”

   He brings his palm up to his cheek, and backs away, slightly red and panting.

   All’s fair, Oliver. I will play dirty if I have to.

   “Good boy,” Clem sing-songs. “Vas dormir maintenant. T’as l’air crevé. Je vais m’occuper de te chercher à manger.”

   “Pas la peine, Clem. Merci.” I cough again and Oliver shakes his head at me, huge smile on his face. He pulls his socks out of his pocket and rolls them back on. I should have hidden them when I had the chance.

   “Non non, j’insiste. Il va bientôt se mettre pleuvoir. Laisse-moi m’occuper de ça. Bonne nuit, mon amour. Bisous.”

   “Good night.” I put the phone back in its cradle and swivel back to Oliver, who claps and doubles over with laughter.

   “Asshole.”

   “Come on. Your performance was so effortless, I wanted to see if I could improve it.”

   I throw the dish towel at him, he ducks and leans down to pick it up. Rising, he reads his watch.

   “Shoot. I need to start thinking about heading back.”

   Must you go, Oliver? You should stay. Please stay. Stay.

   I rub my neck. “Okay. Did you ever try the wine?”

   Oliver looks around, “No, I didn’t. I’ll have a small glass and a cigarette or two but then I really do need to go.” He says it apologetically, regretfully, but polite in a way that’s distant. As if a part of him has already left.

   I take the glasses I left out, the one I’d used earlier and the unused one for him, the bottle, and place them on the kitchen table. He picks up the bottle and refills my glass, then pours one for himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have an Elio's random playlist to post on Spotify after I post all five chapters. If you must listen to 'Me So Horny' now and WHY NOT IT'S HILARIOUS, be sure to do so on headphones so you don't mortify everyone around you. Also, please try to imagine Oliver's face listening to it.
> 
> The song that Oliver likes is 'Deus' by The Sugarcubes. A little ditty about getting fucked by a god sung by a then-eighteen year-old Bjork.
> 
> UPDATE: Special shout-out to Louka for her eagle-eyed pick-up work on the French translation. I work with native speakers on translations if it's a language I don't speak. In this case, all errors were on me since my translator is not familiar with the source material.


	3. Chapter 3

   The windows in the kitchen are floor-to-ceiling, and while it hasn’t started snowing hard yet, the sky remains a portentous chalky-white.

   “You can’t even see the moon out there. I love a pre-storm pink moon.”

   “Alla Luna,” he says, raising his glass.

   “Alla Luna!”

   Our glasses ping together melodiously.

   “Let me see… are my cod-translation powers still in effect?” I snap my fingers, trying to summon the memory of Leopardi’s poem. “Yes. Sto fengari boró na thymithó—”

   “Borough of thermoses!”

   “Noooo, that’s awful…’che, che, or volge l’anno’—vulgar anus, eh ‘gemáti’—”

   “‘Gemáti agonía’. Hey, that pairing works!” he says, directing his joke at the table, teeny smile in place.

   “I came here to this hill to gaze at you.”

   The intention wasn’t to make it sound romantic, but reciting those lines while looking at Oliver, admiring the small lines around his eyes and forehead, the dark blond of his hair, gives them the ring of tribute. He blinks at me and stumbles a bit on the response.

   “You remember it better than I do… uh… huc venirem ad te visere montis? That doesn’t sound right…”

   “I think it might be. ‘Io venia pien d’agoscia a rimirarti.’ Yo! Venison piety at D’Agostino’s rim-rare-tardy...oh, I don’t know.”

   He laughs, slapping the table. “Nice! Eh, I can’t remember the next line. “

   “Neither can I.”

   Oliver takes two cigarettes out of the pack on the table, putting one in his mouth, and leaning over to put the other in mine. He lights mine first, then his. The model of manners and memory. I bring my hand up to touch his seconds too late.

   “I know the last lines.” He exhales and reaches for his wine, swallowing the last bit of red and putting the glass down with an emphatic flourish. “‘E pur mi giova… La ricordanza, e il noverar l’etate del mio dolore.” Oliver projects; his voice, mellifluously dramatic, fingers grasping at the air in an imitation of Italian gesturing. “O come grato occorre nel tempo giovanil, quando ancor lungo la speme e breve ha la memoria il corso, il rimembrar delle passate cose, ancor che triste, e che l’affanno duri!’”

   If there were a clock in the kitchen, I’d focus on its ticking. Or, if the wind were to blow through the bare branches of the London Plane in my yard, then perhaps just the skitter-scratch of their movement. But there are no such distractions, there is only my heart, only that, beating like a cat’s upon seeing a careless bird within swatting, swiping reach.

   One July morning in 1983, two or three days after his arrival, Oliver and I sat at the breakfast table outside the kitchen and recited this very poem. Mom and Papa were late so it was just Oliver and I, with occasional interruptions by Mafalda, bustling around, setting plates and cutlery. We were trying to translate the Italian into Ancient Greek or Latin or French and didn’t, couldn’t; we made joyous nonsense of it instead. At the tail end of our laughter, he’d quieted; looking me in the eye, hard and piercing, and I simply hadn’t known him well enough to understand the meaning of it. So I looked away and back and away again, and blushed. Squirmed. Resolutely misunderstood what he was telling me with that fixed gaze.

   Had I unknowingly established then what he came to think of as my pattern of wavering—approaching and retreating? The fickle romantic, à la Frédéric Moreau, forever circling but never settling with his romantic ideal, Mme. Arnoux?

   I’m sorry, Oliver. At the time, I hadn’t known what I wanted. I didn’t know what it was to want. Certainly not the way I came to want you. Where it felt like I was choking with wanting and the only thing that would do, confusingly enough, was to swallow the cause of it—you—whole.

   If his poetic recitation was another declaration of intent, he’d stare at me the same way now and I would stare back. But he doesn’t engage at all; far more interested in his now-finished wine than in anything I might do or say.

   I play with the copy of _Hero of Our Time_ I’d left on the table that morning. Its edges are bent and worn. “Your Italian has improved.”

   “Grazie mille.”

   “Prego.”

   “I’ve kept practicing over the years.” Oliver leans back in his chair and stretches out his long legs, blowing out smoke in a long stream. “I translated that section into Spanish recently. Do you want to hear it?”

   I nod, tapping my cigarette into the ashtray.

   This recitation is different; slower, his consonants meticulous, but also lighter, finer. “‘Pero me hace bien pensarlo, revivir el tiempo de mi tristeza. Oh, la juventud, cuando la esperanza es un camino largo y la ruta de la memoria es corta. Que dulce es recordar lo que pasó, a pesar de ser triste, y que el dolor perdure.’” He takes a drag of his cigarette, the edge of his lip a deeper wine-stained burgundy. “I also like ‘y que el dolor siga durando’ but I don’t think that’s quite right.”

   “It sounds beautiful. When did you learn Spanish?”

   The answer is a slow, soft-blink and smile. Which could mean, _it’s a long story_ or _I’m not telling_ or even— _Later!_ I can’t decide if this is a graceful aversion or a tease.

   “I always swore I’d have a crack at it,” he supplies, finally, and the note of wistfulness alters the texture of his voice.

   His socked feet aren’t far from mine under the table. I discover this when my toes brush against them accidentally. I want to seek them again, not-so-accidentally, but he sits up and I do the same, a muted copy.

   “Durando? Is that ‘pea—“

   “You’re thinking ‘durazno,’” Oliver interrupts, his voice going low and dark and I feel it in my chest like black liquor. “Durando. Endures. Lasts. Persists. That wasn’t gibberish.”

   Durazno, Durando, Duro, Dur. Hard. Which I am. I’m so hard, it’s embarrassing. I’m grateful for the table between us. I press down with my elbow, as if I’m wiping imaginary crumbs off my lap, cross my legs and hunch forward, propping my chin on my hand.

   “Why not translate the whole thing?”

   Oliver picks up the Lermontov, thumbing through it casually. “Those are the lines I like.”

   “You’re a sentimentalist.”

   He motions with his thumb and index fingers, eyes grave. “A bit.”

   “Un peu.” I tuck my hair behind my ear. “You would have done wonderfully in comparative lit.”

   Oliver puts the book down. “Eh, my German is lousy.”

   Something buzzes past my ear, then in front of my face, landing, finally, on Oliver’s arm. A housefly.

   “Ospiti!” Oliver stage-whispers.

   “Where did you come from?” I address the fly. “You should be dead.”

   He slowly raises his hand to slap it and I say, “Ah ah ah, remember, that is a harbinger…”

   “Of visitors, yes, _me..._ ” Oliver gestures towards himself, fingers at his chest. “And I’m alr—”

   “Of _overnight_ guests. That’s not you. You are just a passerby.”

   The fly buzzes away and lands on a wall, still and unobtrusive, another listener.

   “The only thing that’s a harbinger of is more flies.” Oliver looks around the room. “Do you have a swatter?”

   “Don’t kill my overnight guests before they’ve even arrived, Cauboi.”

   He laughs. “I don’t know how alarmed I should be that you’ve become a middle-aged Lombardian housekeeper.”

   “It was fated.” I pick up the bottle. “Do you want another?”

   “Sure. Small one.”

   I pour until he gestures for me to stop and fill myself an equal-sized glass. He takes a sip and licks his lips. The tip of his tongue is precise.

   “Dafna was getting her doctorate in Comp Lit from the University of Kent,” I blurt out. “She never finished her dissertation.”

   “How far did she get?”

   “Far. First revision. Dissertation proposal.”

   “It happens.” Oliver taps the side of his glass with a fingernail. “Is that why her French is so good?”

   “Hmm? Oh, you were wondering because she’s a Perlman.”

   “Yes.”

   “She studied in Paris also. Her language skills are extraordinary.”

   “What was the subject? Her dissertation?”

   I scrunch up my face, trying to get it exactly right. “Feminism and the 19th Century French Bildungsroman.”

   “Yikes. Like, _Sentimental Education_ and the like? As in, it’s nowhere to be found?”

   “Oh? What makes you say that?”

   “Oh no, no,” he says, shaking his finger at me. “Don’t try and nab me in the classic Perlman Socratic trap. Besides you’re the one that gifted me with _Armance_ so you should know.”

   “That’s not a Bildungsroman. Besides, Armance de Zohiloff has agency.”

   “Does she though?” He squints thoughtfully. “She’s eighteen, penniless, without status, entirely dependent on a family of emotional pirates, trying to find her place in a baffling world, and falling in love for the first time with one of the aforementioned bandits. All that plus discovering that those feelings, as pure and noble as they might seem, aren’t strong enough to withstand basic misunderstandings and deceptions? That’s not becoming an adult?” He raises his hand, palm up, in the universal gesture of ‘isn’t it?’ “And then we never find out what she learned from the life-changing experience of loving Octave. Her coming-of-age is reduced to one sentence about her fate, a sentence that she shares with another character who is nowhere near as important as she is. With bullshit like that, no wonder Dafna didn’t finish. It’s as if the titular character is an afterthought.”

   He stubs out his cigarette and after another drag, so do I.

   “I thought you liked _Armance_ ,” I mumble, looking at the reflection of my eyes in the mirrored pieces of the runner, off-center and not quite symmetrical, less interested in disagreeing than in recalling the exact moment I first spied him reading that book. The color of his t-shirt (blue). His hair (wet).

   “I do like it. Despite myself.”

   We are silent once more, and while it’s comfortable enough, there’s something else, crackling underneath; a disquiet, gray and unformed, like psychic static; hissing and popping and buzzing.

   I slouch and rub the top of my nose.

   “Dafna’s mom, my Aunt Ruth, is an academic also, she teaches at Brooklyn College.”

   “Did Pro teach there, too?”

   “No, he taught at City College.”

   “Were you around then?”

   “Yeah, that’s when we lived on 542 Riverside. Dad loved that apartment because his study had views of the Hudson. I loved it because it had this long hallway I could roller skate on.” I shift in my seat, embarrassed.

   “Huh. I imagine your downstairs neighbor loved you.” Oliver’s smile is fond. “Little Elio. I forget you were born here. You and Dafna seem close.”

   “We are.”

   “You never mentioned her when we were together.”

   Together. When we were together. I’m snagged in that phrase. We were once together. And he’s right, I never mentioned my cousin. Just like he never mentioned his on-again, off-again girlfriend turned fiancée turned wife.

   “Well, when we _knew_ each other,” I pause slightly, my edit deliberate. “I hadn’t seen her in a few years. We moved to Paris in 1980, and she’s three years older so… We were inseparable as kids, though. Elli and Didi. When we left the states, I was despondent.”

   He reaches for my hand and I give it to him. I can’t think why. I can’t think at all. But it feels correct, not improper. I don’t recall the two of us talking seriously about anyone other than each other, the books we were reading, the writing he was doing, the music I was transcribing. History, art, literature, the beauty of everything, but other people flitted in and out of the picture, transitory and irrelevant, minor characters in our play. I suppose I am as guilty of crimes of omission, though mine seemed unimportant to the narrative at the time. They would not have affected anything.

   “You can hardly tell you’ve been apart.”

   Oliver flips my hand over and looks at my palm, touching the lines there. My breath catches, then deepens. I could fall asleep to this. Or the opposite; awaken enough to set this house alight.

   “You know how it is,” I say, feeling far away. “—at first it’s awkward, but only for about ten minutes, and then that familiarity kicks in, and it’s like we’ve never been apart.”

   The wind whistles, high and eerie, past the windows.

   “How did she wind up working for you?”

   “When I did my first recording—”

   “The dreaded Chopin,” he supplies, stroking my wrist with his thumb like a massage.

   “I got in trouble for saying that.”

   He laughs softly and presses a spot that causes me to whine a little in the back of my throat.

   “Thanks, that feels good. Umm, we recorded in New York and I stayed at my aunt and uncle’s house in Brooklyn. Dafna was living there at the time, trying to write her dissertation. She began helping me with organizational things and then, when my label insisted I get a P.A. to handle my stateside business, I asked her.” I pause. “How did you know about the Nocturne comments?”

   “I read your interviews.”

   Present tense. He squeezes my hand, then starts rubbing the area below my thumbs.

   “Don’t crack my fingers.”

   “I wouldn’t. These things are precious.”

   He nods at me and I nod back, trusting and appeased.

   “I don’t love the boss/employee dynamic, so having Dafna around took care of that unpleasantness. Plus… being around her makes sense. She’s like the sister I never had. You know that my parents tried—before and after me, but...”

   “Yes. Your mom and I talked about it. I thought I understood at the time, but of course, I understand better now.”

   Had he lost a child? With his wife? Even if the fact of his marriage makes us impossible, I would never wish him pain, or her. Them. His family. There is no water to dive into to drown the feeling.

   “I like Dafna.” He says, with husky-voiced, measured certainty. “She’s tough, direct but not brusque or unkind. And beautiful too, unaware of it.” He lets go of my hands, beautiful as well.

   “She noticed you, you know, waiting in the entry area and felt the need to tell me Prince Charming was in attendance.”

   “She did? Me?” He points to himself in disbelief. Disingenuousness is not usually an attractive feature but on him...

   “You.”

   His mouth falls open into a small, unsure smile and it looks like he wants to say something but cannot. I decide to save him.

   “So you follow my career, then?”

   “Of course.”

   As if there were a choice, his answer seems to say.

   “You’re hard to avoid, Elio. Aside from being a classical music superstar, you sure are photographed a lot.”

   I clench my hands into fists and shut my eyes in embarrassment. “Oh, God. I know.”

   “Hey, you’re a good subject. I love the new album cover.”

   “Stop.” I open one eye, grimacing.

   “What?” Laughing, he takes my hand again. “You look like a sleepy Renaissance prince.”

   Oliver drapes himself on the table mimicking the pose and half-closing his eyes. It’s an uncanny imitation and laughing, I wind up mirroring him, mirroring me. He unclasps our hands, but keeps his near, on reserve.

   “Well, you’re one to talk. Your most recent author photo is ridiculous.”

   “Oh yeah? How so?”

   Oliver, his beard, not as full, more like stubble, looking directly at the lens in a tight black and white close-up, with an expression that might’ve seemed baleful if not for the undercurrent of wary sadness in his eyes. Like a man with secrets only the right person could pry out of him. He’s clad in a slightly-open shirt and jean jacket, the barest bit of neck and Adam’s apple showing, his hand grasping his arm, the long jamb of his thumb and index finger in a bracketed L-shape. If one was drawn to attractive question marks, as I undoubtedly was, then there one sat, in near-ideal form.

   I’d read the book in bed. When I was done, I knelt in front of the photo, took my cock in saliva-slickened hand, and, with the slow focus of the sick, stroked myself, looking into those eyes and coming, in lengthy, tremulous spurts, all over that beautiful face.

   It was a kind of worship. Of myself, as well as him. One hand on my neck and the other on the photo, spreading my ejaculate on his mouth, chin, cheeks, neck, the hardcover photo paper damp and ruined.

   “Is your total silence good or bad?”

   My eyes shoot up to his, the real thing, in color and in the flesh. I feel like he can see every obscene image in my head, like I’m projecting them straight from my brain to the wall.

   “Look at you.” He laughs again. “You’re blushing.”

   “Leave me alone.” I use my hair, wrists, and elbows to cover my face.

   “Okay, okay, stop hiding. Thank you. I’m flattered.”

   “You should be.” I pull my hair back, meeting his eyes and staying there.

   He looks at our hands, fingers close enough to touch again, already reaching towards each other and angles his head to check his wristwatch.

   “I have to go.”

   “Yes.”

   It must be midnight.

   Oliver stands from the table, bringing his wine cup to the sink and rinsing it. “This was great.”

   I am not weak, I am not seventeen anymore, I have loved others for longer and better.

   “We should do it again soon,” he continues.

   I don’t want him to go, I have never gotten older, you were the first, Oliver.

   “Yes. Lets.”

   He dries the glass with the dish towel, places it back in the cabinet, lining it up carefully with the other wine glasses and looks towards me expectantly, waiting, it seems, for me to walk him out. I stand and lead the way, lit with nerves and something like panic.

   “Come have dinner with my family. Meet Ben.”

   I nod and stop next to the stairs, smiling.

   “How about later this month? Oh right, you won’t be around. Will you be back in April? Maybe Passover? Come over for Seder. You won’t have to ask the four questions, I promise.”

   This is meant to be funny. I know it is. But.

   “Sure.”

   “Yes?”

   “Uh-huh.” I raise my eyebrows and nod.

   Oliver puts his hands on his hips and breathes out. “You don’t want to.”

   I don’t answer.

   “But you would see me alone?”

   I know what that says about me. I’m not that person. And yet I might be. “I don’t know. Can I have another cigarette, leave me one?”

   He hands me his pack. “Keep it. I have another.”

   I take the pack, put one in my mouth, but wave him away when he tries to light it for me. I remove it and slide it behind my ear. His expression is cool.

   “Is it better, you think,” he asks, carefully. “—to remember me as I was than to know me in the present?”

   “No. Yes. I don’t know. Safer. Maybe.”

   I’m doing it again, destroying the tempo with my petulance. We look at one another again and wordlessly communicate through nods; his smile wavering, attempting, I can see, to coax me into speaking. He’s right. I should. No fudging. I’m the one who speaks. He’s the one who listens.

   “I can read your books, Oliver. Look at your author photos. Know you live in Greenwich, all about your family and be so happy for you, that you’re alive in the world. And it has been… wonderful to have you here. Talking to you. Being with you. But going to your house and eating with your family…” I pause, focusing all my effort into stopping the mad wiggle of my mouth. “I don’t think I can.”

   “You don’t think you can.”

   He steps towards me and stops, as if sensing a boundary he cannot cross.

   “You’re right. There’s a part of me that has kept you as you were. I think that… I keep you there because if you’re in the past, you cannot change, and you cannot leave.” I point to my chest, as if that’s the origin-point, the nexus of all. “Within me, you’re everywhere, all the moments before Clusone, and the train never comes, and you don’t get on.”

   I smile with the relief of someone has finally revealed a secret that has been killing them and knows the repercussions will be a much lighter sort of murder. “I’m sorry for the speech.”

   “Elio. I—“

   Music is still playing, and it is a club number, beats and synth strings, completely inappropriate for the moment. I giggle at the absurdity and it strengthens my voice, gives it a harder-edged resolve.

   “I can’t because I’m not ready. There.” My smile is wide, apologetic and ready to crumble the minute he looks away. “I’m not as good as you.”

   He steps towards me again and while I don’t move, I can’t look up anymore either.

   Oliver continues, nearly at my ear. “And that’s not true. You are good, better. I think—”

   I walk towards the coat closet, cutting him off. I hand him his jacket and coat, keenly aware of the distance between my arm, outstretched and near-aggressive, and the place where he stands. He approaches me tentatively, taking them from my hand.

   “Thank you.”

   He puts on his shoes and then the rest of it. I remember his scarf, still upstairs in my bedroom and can’t bring myself to remind him. I will keep it, add it to my collection.

   Oliver stands at the door. “Write to me, or call me.”

   “At work?”

   “Wherever.”

   I am still smiling but can’t breach the distance between us. We nod stupidly at one another. He smiles tightly and turns, going out the foyer door and then the front door and each one slams with finality. The echo resounds.

   A new song plays. Peppy, bright, ridiculous. A few lines are sung, only a few, just three, and those lines weave in and out of my mounting inability to breathe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem that Elio and Oliver are translating in and out of gibberish is Alla Luna by Giacomo Leopardi--this memory is taken directly from Aciman's novel. I did not do a roll-over for this because I wanted Elio and Oliver to have something that excluded the reader. If you'd like to read the poem, and you should, it's lovely, relevant, and an easy internet search away. 
> 
> Thank you to nightlocktime for reviewing my basura translation of Alla Luna and correcting where needed.
> 
> I could not find a proper Lombardian translation for houseguest. Italian readers with a strong knowledge of regional Italian dialects, hook a sister up! Message me on tumblr: @ ghostcat3000.
> 
> The club track that is inappropriately scoring the final scene is 'Left to My Own Devices' by The Pet Shop Boys. The jarring song that follows is 'Hong Kong Garden' by Siouxsie and the Banshees. The random feature on Elio's multiple-CD player is not being nice.
> 
> For the end-of-chapter dinner invitation, I took a cue from Aciman’s novel but since Pense-bête Oliver and Elio are younger here than their book counterparts, the conversation goes a little differently. 
> 
> Please come back Sunday for the next chapter, which I have an insane fondness for.
> 
> Shout out to arbitrarily for her feedback on this chapter. Thank you.


	4. Chapter 4

   He’ll be gone—but I jam my feet into my dress shoes anyway, without bothering to look for socks. I bargain with myself: if he’s still sitting in his parked car outside as lost as I am, I’ll say goodbye, properly this time. Kiss him. Because what harm could it do, to kiss him, what transgression could that possibly be compared to the whole other life he’s been having without me? And if he never wants to talk to me again, at least I’ll have the brief memory of my boldness. Feelings are a sickness, my mind repeats feebly. I am sick with them.

   I fish my keys out of my coat pocket without putting on my coat, rush through the vestibule, and open the door to a billowing, overwhelming curtain of white. Fat, sticking snowflakes blow sideways, blinding me, and drip cold down the bony dip of my ankles and into my shoes. After the momentary weather-shock passes, I rally, nearly slipping on the stairs, but make it past the gate and there, Oliver is there. Still here, crouched on the sidewalk next to his car. He looks up, eyes near-closed from the wind’s assault.

   “Someone slashed my tires,” he shouts, voice papery-thin in the wind. “I only have one spare.”

   “Oh.” I cram all the relief in the world into a single vowel. Pull my sleeves over my hands, battling teeth-chatter and hope.

   Oliver rises, glaring at me. “You’re barely dressed, you lunatic. Get inside.”

   “I didn’t—”

   He strides over and hustles me back up the stairs, tight against him, and he’s warm. I place my hands, my arms, on top of his.

   “Hurry up, open the door before you get frostbite.”

   I drop the keys once and when I bend to pick them up, he bends with me, so close I can feel his warm breath at the nape of my neck.

   “Come on, Elio,” urgent and commanding and I get it together and do as he says.

   We stumble into the foyer because I left the inside door open.

   There are snowflakes in his lashes and he wipes at his eyes, mouth pressed tight. “What are you thinking? No hat, no coat. Do you want to catch pneumonia?”

   My answer is swift—I hug him, pressing my cold, damp face to his. This is what I’m thinking.

   I look at his back in the mirror, the tops of his ears, tinged red from the cold—anything but his face, because if I do, I’ll do what I’d promised myself I would if he was still outside.

   When I’m warm enough to, I let go.

   “I’m… I’m sorry about your car,” I say, wincing at yet another lapse into stuttering. It’s rare enough to almost be non-existent, but Oliver seems to bring it out of me.

   “No big deal. I’ll call Triple A and they’ll send someone.” He ruffles the top of my head, shaking the snow out of my hair, the pained expression on his face softening. “Please go put on some socks at least.”

   I dust the snow off of his arms and shoulders, harder and brisker with each pass, and he does the same to me, with an indulgent exactness.

   When he bends down to untie his shoes and remove them, I take off mine. I hold out my hand and he hands his to me, I put them next to my own.

   “I’m going to go use your phone.”

   “Okay.”

   Oliver peels off his coat, hangs it on the banister, and moves purposefully towards the kitchen, unbuttoning his suit jacket with one hand. I wait.

   I like the way his coat looks, hanging there, as if he’s just come home. I touch it, sticking my hand inside the sleeve, and brush my knuckles against the smooth lining. 

   It isn’t difficult to picture him living here. Chairs moved to other areas, Oliver chairs, a new lamp, Oliver lamp, a stack of books, Oliver books, artwork he’s selected hanging on the walls, Oliver office in the small, empty room with the stained glass door that he liked, Oliver, Oliver, Oliver—signs of another life.

   The walls are bare, and I won’t be back for another month and a half at least. And then, maybe not alone.

   Oliver’s on the phone in the kitchen, speaking in a warm rush of consonants, and I slide his coat on backwards, like an embrace.

   By the time he returns, with a long drawn-out sigh, his coat is back in the closet, I’ve put on socks and I’m absentmindedly playing with the cigarettes he gifted me—mulling over whether to have another, keep my fingers and mouth occupied.

   “They can’t come until six AM at the earliest. They’re inundated with roadside assistance requests because of the storm.”

   “I’m sorry, Oliver.”

   He hangs his suit jacket, smoothing it out. “Why were my tires slashed, you think?”

   I have no idea, but I can tell from his expression that he thinks he does. “It wasn’t me.”

   Oliver bursts out laughing. “I know that.” He shakes his head. “Goose.”

   “Why do _you_ think your tires were slashed?”

   He stills, biting the inside of his cheek. “Maybe whoever did it, saw me coming home with you and drew their own conclusions.”

   “I don’t think it’s because someone thinks you’re a 'faggot'.”

   It’s a knife of a word. Slurs always are.

   He breathes in sharply, his eyebrows hitting his hairline. “Now, hold up, I wasn’t implying—”

   “I’m not offended. But I don’t want to talk around it either. It doesn’t mean that that wasn’t the reason because it would be naive to rule it out. Only that it hasn’t happened to me here—it has not been my experience; not on my street, not yet.”

   “Okay.”

   I choose my words carefully. “Is that something you worry about often?”

   “No.”

   He’s uneasy.

   “I’m really very sorry about your car. There’s a lady that lives across the street—Mrs. Pierce—she's always at her window. If I see her tomorrow, I’ll ask whether she saw anything. She’s the eyes and ears of this neighborhood.”

   Oliver makes a non-committal _hmmm_ noise. “The car looks fine, it’s just the tires. As long as it’s still there in the morning, it’s all good.”

   Silence falls between us and we are exactly as we were before he left, only our positions are reversed.

   He regards me with a tentative sort of smile. “So your fly was an accurate harbinger after all.”

   “It would appear so,” I say with a nod.

   “Do you really not mind having a houseguest for the night?”

   I shake my head, swaying slightly in place. “No.”

   “What I mean is, do you mind having _me_ as a houseguest?”

   “Maybe.” It’s a cruel thing to say, I understand that a moment later when his smile flickers briefly into hurt. “No, really. I don’t mind.”

   “I knew you hadn’t forgiven me.”

   “What is there to forgive?” I mean it, I’ve never meant anything more.

   Oliver’s brows knit together.

   I sidle up to him and gently, with care and not a little daring, pull his necklace from his collar, touching the points of the Star with my thumb. “Where would you go? If I said you couldn’t stay?”

   He blows out an exasperated puff of air. “I’d have to walk my way back to Manhattan, I suppose. Or try and find a cab. Do cabs even come out here?”

   “Yellow cabs? Not usually.”

   That Star of David has been in my mouth. It fell from his neck that first night and landed on my chest. I looked into his eyes and with slow deliberation, put it past my lips. We kissed through its points, tongues touching between the spaces. It had bounced off my skin as he fucked me; glinted from the hollow between his shoulder and clavicle when I fucked him; shone through my fingers whenever I pulled him closer.

   “Ask me a second time.”

   Understanding dawns on his face. He looks at the Star between my fingers.

   “Do you mind having me as a houseguest?”

   “No.” I nod. “Once more?”

   “Would you mind having me as your houseguest?”

   As a fellow Jew, Oliver knows. Three times asked, three times confirmed, and the answer becomes permanent; truer than true.

   “It would be my pleasure.”

   We shake on it. Brothers once again.

   When I let go of his hand, I breathe in, as long as a paragraph. “So uh, do you want another drink?”

   “Tell you what, why don’t we smoke some of that Alaskan greenery instead?”

   He suggests it in a manner both reasonable and naughty, and I take it in the spirit it’s given—with a lengthy, faux-solemn _aaaah_ of consideration.

   “What a fine idea, Oliver.”

   “Glad you think so, Elio. Lead the way.”

   There is no bong or pipe, and my suggestion of smoking it off one of the decorative green apples is rejected by Oliver immediately. He deduces, correctly as it turns out, that Dafna would have left rolling papers and finds some in the same tall cabinet where he’d located the huge ashtray.

   “Your cousin knows how you work, and is thorough, besides. While I can conceive of her leaving you without rolling papers as payback for this ridiculous errand, I think her sense of duty would override that impulse.”

   “Uh-huh. Sounds accurate.”

   “And yet you were ready to spear Bic pens through apples like some kind of stoner MacGyver,” he teases, expertly rolling three perfect joints.

   I watch him lick their seams with fascination. “I knew you’d save us.”

   “Right.” He pulls the cigarette pack from my pocket and places two of the joints in there and hands it back to me with a raised eyebrow. “Don’t take those on the plane. Leave ‘em here for next time.”

   Oliver lights the joint, puffing to get it to ignite, and I wave him off when he tries to hand it to me for the first hit. He takes a draw, passes it, and walks to the sitting room, falling heavily on the loveseat he’d been sitting in before. Blows out smoke as he settles into the velvet. I take a deep drag, hold it in my lungs and sit next to him, handing him the joint as I exhale.

   “Well?”

   I nod furiously. “It’s good.”

   He takes a hit and, with a practiced air, exhales smoke my way. “We’re not going to need much. There’s no burn at all, so it’s probably got a mellow potency. Do you know if this has a name? A strain this good usually does.”

   “Too Much? It was expensive.” I inhale, deep, and struggle valiantly to keep myself from coughing it all out.

   He laughs. “Of course.”

   I take another hit, even larger than the previous one, realize too late that it is actually his turn; and quickly, without thinking, pull on the thick starch of his collar, bringing his face closer to mine. His mouth falls open and I blow the smoke into it, my eyes on his, wide and open, forehead to forehead, then nose to nose as if tugged even closer. He grabs my wrist; painfully, pleasurably tight. We stay there, in suspension, as he swallows it down and holds it. His cough begins moments after that, as a wiggle in his shoulders, and there’s laughter in the smoke.

   “Sorry,” I say, not feeling very sorry at all as he rests his head on my shoulder, and I scratch the soft hair on the back of his head, instead of stroking it. I still have the joint in my right hand.

   Oliver pulls back, licking his lips and patting my face, thumb following the line of my jaw. “It’s fine.”

   And there is the fire.

   “Be right back,” I say, as coolly as I can manage. “Don’t go anywhere.”

   I slide to the kitchen—pretend-ice-skating in my socks and then pretending that I didn’t just do that—to slap my cheeks and grab the ashtray—and that’s when the high really hits me, like a pillow bursting with feathers. It’s not jarring, I’m not paranoid or scared, but I was just here, right at this counter, and it didn’t gleam with specks of silver before. The music wasn’t as loud. The smell of Oliver’s skin wasn’t sticking to me like sweat, his sweat, my sweat, our sweat.

   The ashtray weighs a ton and I cradle it in my arms to protect it. Oliver laughs at my approach.

   “What?”

   He just points and laughs, slapping at his thighs.

   I sit, pushing my leg against his as he laughs, folding towards me and back, clutching his stomach like a demented jack-in-the-box. He removes his sweater again, it’s far less considered this time, and it occurs to me he knew what he was doing when he took it off upstairs. He was performing a genteel not-quite striptease.

   But to what end? The answer is patently obvious and also impossible and I need to relax my shoulders.

   Carefully, Oliver folds the sweater over the arm of the couch. He turns and looks pointedly at my mouth, that’s when I see the joint is just hanging out of the corner of my lips, long ash tip in danger of falling onto my lap.

   “Here, give me the baby,” he offers, taking the massive ashtray from me and holding it there while I figure out the incredibly complicated task of removing the joint from my mouth and tapping it into the center.

   I suck on my teeth. “This stuff is intense.”

   “You know what else is intense? This ashtray.”

   His hair is silky looking. Freshly cut, too; the ends are the give-away. I lean in to sniff discreetly.

   “Look,” he continues, pointing at the embellishments. “It’s Zodiac-themed. It has all the astrological symbols… runes?”

   “Symbols.” 

   Since he's busy with his inspection, I stare at his face like I'm trying to gulp water without anyone noticing. Oliver lashes, the _muvi star_ profile, how his top lip rests above his bottom lip, giving him a look that is both considered and contained—one inquiry away from action or dismissal, the warm curve of chin grounding it all. The perfect mathematical beauty.

   “Yes, and dates. How informative. Did you buy this?” He turns his head to me.

   “I think it came with the house.”

   “A true kitsch treasure.” Oliver balances the ashtray on his thighs and brings the joint up to his lips, inhaling deeply. He crooks his finger at me and I follow it to his face, rising on my knees to hover a hair above him as he blows up into my mouth and this time, our lips briefly touch. It is not a kiss, there is no movement, and as soon as there is contact, it’s over. The whole thing is casual in appearance, but it tilts the world around me. So perhaps, not casual at all, not in content, not on my part.

   I stay where I am, holding on to the back of the couch right behind his shoulders and don’t exhale, holding the smoke until it fades and touching his beard, which is soft, flecked light brown and gold.

   “What do you think? Do I look professorial? Does it suit me?”

   Oliver in the front of a lecture-style hall. Oliver as my professor. Scenarios click through my mind like slides on a carousel. Oliver, whose eyes are avidly scanning my face, makes a small hiccuping noise of laughter.

   Adopting an air of casual dismissiveness, I say, “It’s not awful.”

   The corner of his lip twitches then stills. “When are you going to join us bearded scholars?”

   “Never. Still can’t really grow more than a sparse moustache. I take after my mother's side of the family.”

   Oliver snorts, touching the space between my brows. “I thought the French were supposed to be hairy.”

   “So are Italians but you’ve seen my thighs. Not a hair on them.”

   It’s not a come-on, my saying this. He has seen every inch of me. This is a fact. And friends don’t ignore facts even if it elicits an unwelcome response. We are both glassy-eyed and grinning now. Our silence is also complicit.

   His pupils are huge and I want to lick them. I grab his chin and wiggle it, fighting the urge to bite and nip. Devour.

   “Do you like my hair longer?”

   Tentatively, he touches the strands on the side of my face, wrapping a finger around a curl. Then more, a fistful, which he pulls back gently, my head going with it, exposing my neck. I swallow slowly, like a snake with a meal. He eyes the pulse of it, my swallow, first flat and cold, then surprised, as if he’d momentarily forgotten he was staring.

   “Sure. I’d like you any which way.” He removes his hand from my hair and stands, his back to me. He speaks to the wall, gravelly and terse. “Listen, uh, where’s the bathroom? I need to piss.”

   “To the right of the stairs.”

   “Great.”

   He exits and I ash the joint carefully, then smoke again, knowing almost instantly that I have hit a near-psychedelic high and that the last toke was unnecessary to the point of being dangerous. I put out the joint, ember by tiny ember, and leave it in the ashtray, carrying everything, stately and unhurried, to the kitchen. I place it in the sink and watch it for seconds or twenty minutes. The tip remains unlit.

   Oliver has not reappeared. I grab a bottle of sparkling water from the fridge and go into the hallway. Find the bathroom door open, and the bathroom empty.

   “Oliver!” I call out. Did I dream his presence?

   “Elio!” he replies from somewhere upstairs.

   The balustrade feels smooth and alive under my hand, each step has a tone, and I skip back and forth on them, playing a groaning melody in time to the Blondie song playing over the soundsystem.

   I find him in my bedroom, facedown on the mattress. The small bedside lamp is on and resting on its side, as if knocked over, casting a butter-yellow spotlight by his head. He’s taken off his socks again and the shiny, pink smoothness of his soles makes me want to drop to my knees and crawl to them, running my tongue on their smooth arches, pressing my head against them like a housecat, then flipping him over and placing them on my shoulders.

   His feet have always fascinated me.

   Then there’s his ass. As pert as an apricot in those blue pants, brown leather belt visible at the waist and I wouldn’t know where to start. Whip him, choke him, use it to secure his hands. Him doing the same to me. Sliding it out of his belt loops, let me do it, slow this time. Too many things, there’s not enough time to do everything I want to do with him. I’d need years.

   Even face-to-face sounds delectable. No belt necessary.

   The basement is fairly secure. He could be my prisoner. I could keep him in chains like someone out of Dumas. Fuck him into compliance and keep him in one of those masks that keeps his mouth propped open all day, saliva dripping down his chin and neck, just dying for my cock. I’d make it good for him, he’d be entirely willing.

   No doubt the police would come asking questions. I haven’t seen him since the storm, Officer. Yes, please let me know if you hear anything. He’s a very dear friend.

   I plop next to him on the mattress.

   He cracks open a single blue eye. “I. Am fucked up.”

   “Me too.” I smile. “Acqua Frizzante?”

   “Si, per favore.”

   I twist the top and the water shoots out, getting me in the face, neck and front of my t-shirt and sweatpants. “Fuck!”

   Oliver giggles helplessly and hides under a pillow. “Oh noooo. A waterfall.”

   I stand up holding the bottle away from me, dripping.

   “I would help you except I can’t move my limbs right now. You okay?”

   “Yeah. Me okay.” I pull my shirt away from my skin, it slaps back. “Shit. That was half the bottle. It’s like somebody shook it.”

   Oliver rolls over and sits up, barely, touching my side of the bed. “Bed’s dry, at least.”

   “I need to change.”

   I run to the bathroom and peel off my shirt, wringing it out in the tub, then slip out of my sweatpants, which are only wet in the crotch but look as if I didn’t make it to the toilet in time. My boxers and socks are dry enough. I hang the rest on the shower knobs.

   Back in the bedroom, Oliver is still half-sitting, eyeing the open bottle of sparkling water with something like desperation. I pick it up and bring it over and he thanks me with his eyes, pausing, bottle near his lips, to look me over and just as quickly, with a mad flutter of eyelashes, look away. As if my body was a house fire with an entire family trapped inside.

   I dig out another t-shirt and sweatpants from my bureau. The latter is easy, I step into them like air, the t-shirt takes longer. I’m transfixed by the image on the front.

   “What is it?”

   I hold up the t-shirt. Oliver groans.

   “Really? What’s wrong with it?”

   “I don’t like clowns.”

   “Klaus Nomi was not a clown, he was a leading avant-garde pop-opera vocalist.”

   “Please don’t.” He practically whines, covering his face and reaching over blindly to right the lamp at his elbow.

   Nomi’s startled eyes bore into me. I put it back, grab another t-shirt and pull it over my head, stepping over Oliver and sitting down cross-legged on the mattress, grabbing the water from him, taking a swig—cold, too cold, and with so much fizz that it chokes.

   I wipe my mouth with my forearm, setting the bottle next to me. “How did you almost finish this?”

   Oliver rests his cheek on his arm, mouthing the letters on my t-shirt silently. _P-I-L._ He looks at me, eyes hazy. “You have a lot of band t-shirts.”

   “You have a lot… of teeth.”

   He laughs first and I join him, sliding down to lie alongside. Soon enough he’s laughing so hard, he’s nearly crying and my stomach muscles ache from laughing. When we quiet down, his face is soft and sweet and I think, with a sigh, he no longer belongs to me. But he did for a tiny little while. And that too, was sweet.

   “Do you want to borrow some clothes? Something more comfortable?”

   “You have something that would fit me?”

   I nod. “I like things large.”

   Before he can say anything, I cover his face with my hand, fingers outstretched and I can feel his teeth pressed against my palm, like when you stroke a cat and one sharp tooth appears. I roll over onto my back. A moment later, so does he.

   “Elio?”

   “Oliver.” I love saying his name. 

   “You should hang up some photos or artwork. On the walls. There's something unnerving about this blankness."

   “You think so?”

   “Yes, I can't feel you here.”

   He rubs his hand on the mattress, palm down. He's staring at me. I can feel the weight of it. I like it.

   “Oliver?”

   “Elio.” Now he looks away.

   “You know what you were saying before about being a hack—which you’re not, by the way, don’t ever think that.”

   He breathes out an amused sort of noise. “Yeah?”

   “I think I might be.”

   “What are you talking about?” He shoots me a disbelieving, irritated glance. “You’re twenty-fucking-three, that’s not old enough to be a hack.”

   “Sure it is.” I bring my knees up and rock side-to-side. “I’m more a talented mimic than interpreter. A magpie.”

   “Bullshit. You replaced that guy in those concerts, when was that, in ‘84? You were still in high school. That’s insane.”

   “No, it was luck. Perlemuter took ill a few days before that concert, Jacques—” Oliver opens his mouth to interrupt me and I keep talking, faster and louder, before he can dismiss me. “—Rouvier, my instructor at the Paris National Music Conservatory, had been a student of his, and he recommended me because I knew Ravel’s ‘Miroirs’ inside and out. It was convenient for everyone.”

   “You were an overnight sensation! It was in the _New York Times_! I called your parents.”

   “You did?”

   “They were so proud. So was I.”

   “They didn’t tell me.”

   “No, I can’t imagine they would have.” He smiles, distantly, then tucks my hair behind my ear. “I went out and purchased a bootleg recording of one of those shows with help from this lunatic music teacher at Mannes. The way he carried on you would have thought we were buying cocaine.”

   “Really?” I sound like a rube.

   “Yeah.”

   I bite my thumb. “How was the sound quality?”

   “Negligible. Still listened to it. In fact, I listened to it so much, I wore out the tape, it unspooled in my old car deck. Hasn't played right since, despite my best efforts to repair the damage.”

   This fascinates me. To think that I’d been with him somehow, unaware of it.

   He shifts, crossing his legs at the ankle and folding his arms behind his head. “One of those sections, I remembered you playing it that summer. In bits and pieces. One note, sometimes more. Over and over again, like you were trying to get the right tone.”

   “‘Une barque sur l'océan’.”

   “Yes. Hearing you play the whole piece was quite moving. Like a painting that’s finally complete.”

   I want to tell him that it wasn’t close to finished.

   “I’ve been thinking of transitioning into conducting. I’ve even started composing.”

   “Oh?” He practically glows with eagerness. “I always thought you might, what with your constant transcribing. What are you working on?”

   “A piano sonata. I’ll let you hear it when it’s done.”

   “And when will that be?”

   “I don't know. Soon, I hope.”

   We lean towards one another, head to head, our eyes on the ceiling, comfortable in silence.

   “Sorry. I don’t mean to seem ungrateful for my success. I do like playing, it’s an honor to be able to, even if I don’t think much of my ability.” The flatness in my voice unsettles even me. Truths said out loud often have that effect. “But the photos and the rest, that’s just marketing. I’m popular with the youth market.”

   “Good. You should be. Your playing is gorgeous and you’re gorgeous.”

   My face heats at the compliment.

   “You were the youngest winner of the Gramophone award. And you won that prize last year in Switzerland.”

   Did he know everything?

   “My most recent recording got panned,” I pout.

   “So what,” he says, with sudden vehemence, flipping onto his stomach, supporting himself with his elbows. “Make another.”

   “That easy, huh?”

   “Yup. Make a dozen recordings, play hundreds of concerts.” On the word ‘hundreds’ he sweeps his hand in front of his chest like a conductor calling for a change in tempo. “Each one you make will be better than the last. Because anyone can have talent, but doing what you do is more than talent. Don’t make it smaller than it is.”

   And I feel better, mollified by his certainty.

   “Is this how you talk to your son when he falls off his bike?”

   His face softens. “He doesn’t like riding his bike.”

   And then he seems small, curling up into himself, on his back again, his voice uncertain.

   “Sometimes, I hide in my office pretending to work so I don’t have to handle bathtime.”

   His eyes move back and forth on the ceiling, caught in the act of remembering.

   “And sometimes I lose my temper and yell at him when he’s smeared ink from his Batman stamp on the walls.”

   “Batman stamp?”

   “Oh, last month’s hellish piece of junk from one of the many birthday party goody bags he brings home from preschool.” He glances at me with an air of hapless exhaustion. “I’m a lousy father. Different than my lousy father, but lousy nonetheless. Guilty of similar crimes of inattention, albeit on a smaller scale.”

   “And yet, you collect jokes to tell him every night. You’re right. What a monster.”

   He raises one shoulder, rubs it against his cheek. “Well, it’s not much.”

   Even when I was very small, my father would have me sit by him in the evenings and ask me about my day. His life was full of adult things: responsibilities, books, people, papers. And yet, at seven or eight PM, there we’d be.

   “Small attentions grow over time and mean the world.”

   There’s a round splotch of yellow on the ceiling, I block it with my hands as if it were the sun.

   “Why are ghosts bad liars?”

   “What?”

   Oliver elbows me and nods, widening his eyes as if to say, come on, play along, Elio.

   “Oh. Sorry! I don’t know. Why are ghosts bad liars?”

   “Because you can see right through them!”

   It is stupid and obvious and I howl with laughter. He puts his foot on top of mine and they push against each other, leisurely, like if we’re dipping them in cool water on a hot day.

   “I can’t believe they put all the beds together except for mine.”

   “How many are there?”

   “Four.” I barely make it to the ending r in the word before curling into myself in a fit of giggles.

   “Four extra bedrooms? Why?” He shakes me by the arm and I go limp, moving back and forth like a rag doll. “Why do you have so many bedrooms?”

   “For guests?”

   Oliver cackles, rolling over to hit my shoulder with his chest, then away, falling onto the wooden floor with a thud and an _oof_ before crawling back onto the mattress, Komodo Dragon-like. When he settles again, smiling, I know, despite my best efforts, who the real prey around here is.

   I should have jerked off when I had the chance.

   “Can I ask you something? You might not like it. It’s impolite.”

   Oliver stares at me intently. “You can ask me anything.”

   “Have you been tested?”

   “Yes.” He answers quickly, not rushed, but honest.

   “Where? You went to a clinic?”

   “No. My primary care doctor. He’s very discreet.”

   “Have there been other men?”

   He nods. “Not many. I’ve been careful.”

   “Women?”

   He shakes his head. “Only my wife. There are no other women.”

   So it’s like that. “Butchers and bakers,” I murmur.

   His nose is well-shaped; long and sloped. My pinkie could ski down its length.

   “You?” Oliver nudges me with his knee.

   “Women? Yes. Many.”

   He scoffs. “That’s not what I meant.”

   I’d known what he meant. “Yes, I get tested regularly.”

   “Regularly? So you’re not monogamous?”

   Does he follow my love life like he follows my career?

   “I have been. For a little over a year. Monogamous, I mean. It’s somewhat serious.”

   He stares at me, clear-eyed and fixed. “I know.”

   My fingers squeeze my lower lip. “But I got tested again recently to appease her. She was nervous about the time I spent in Germany with a sick friend in November.” Off of his look, I repeat. “Just a friend.”

   “Why?”

   I roll my eyes, sick to my stomach over a topic I’d spent months arguing about. “Because people are scared and don’t want to educate themselves about how AIDS is actually transmitted. I have another test coming up, the second of the recommended two. I'm fine. Ignorance breeds paranoia.”

   Oliver exhales raggedly. “Did your friend… ?”

   Christian, with his eyes gone milk-white and ribs like a bone cage with barely any flesh to cover it; splotches of dark red blooming on his nose, back, underarms, legs, holding my hand and barely breathing; his fingers—that were always stronger than mine and played much, much better—brittle, thin and grasping. Our friends had found him feeling his way down his hall, already mostly blind, trying to find his way out to the street and into the taxi that would take him to the hospital where he would die.

   We’d been lovers only briefly, four years ago at a summer festival in Salzburg. I’d been experimenting with heartlessness but he hadn’t held it against me. We both recognized that, for us, friendship was the more valuable love. He had a wonderfully ridiculous sense of humor. He loved The Beatles, Schubert, Jorge Luis Borges and Luchino Visconti. He had a thin upper lip. When he smiled, it disappeared completely.

   Nobody knew that he was sick, because he was embarrassed to say. Imagine that. Being embarrassed of dying. When they called me with the news, there was no question. No fretting about risk. I had to go.

   Pianos aren’t easily portable, and while a group of us hatched an insane plan to roll one outside his window so he could hear the Schubert I’d learned just for him, his friends Tim and Sandra rose to the occasion instead—performing an exquisite Bach Double Concerto for Violins that left his nurses in tears. Not that they weren’t always in tears.

   By nine PM he was gone. The next day, after being up all night, wandering bleary-eyed through the city with the others, I fell asleep at the cinema and dreamed of him, flying from West Berlin into East with no one to stop him. A few days later, the wall came down.

   “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

   “Me too.”

   “How old was he?”

   “Twenty-four.”

   That’s how old you were when we met, Oliver. Don’t ever die. Or, at least, let me go first so I never have to know what I’ve already practiced more times than I can count.

   I’ve rehearsed the deaths of everyone I love, hundreds of times, so that when the moment comes, I’ll have already lived through the worst of it and all that will be left is the performance of grief.

   I touch his cheeks with my fingertips, his hairline, the part at the temples where it’s blonder, hairs baby-fine and nearly-ash, his chin. The pale pink blush of his eyelids, the tiny lines that surround. It’s possible that this entire night has been another kind of rehearsal, I don’t know what for exactly. Leaving, being left, loving, liking, worshiping, memorializing.

   He doesn’t touch me but he looks, focus shifting when mine does. As if we were mirrored surfaces reflecting only one another.

   My Latin is rusty, but this I remember. “Media vita in morte sumus.”

   “Oh, I know that song. The Smiths, right?” he says, scrunching up his nose and closing his eyes, only to blink them open a moment later at my laugh; the lingering sadness blown away by the silly, shared reference, the shared way we think.

   “I’ll be twenty-four in a month.”

   Oliver shifts, propping himself up on his hand. “Elio at twenty-four.” He looks at me then, hard and a bit cool; ever the sagacious judge of character. “I wonder about that sometimes… what you would have done.”

   “If I’d met a seventeen-year-old you pining away for me under the fruit trees?”

   “No.” He huffs, shaking his head. “If we’d both been twenty-four when we met. And please, you weren’t pining,” he adds dismissively.

   How little he knows. I smile a smile that gets broader and broader with every well-considered image.

   “So you have thought about it.”

   “Yes. But mostly the hypothetical where you’re seventeen and I’m twenty-four.”

   He lifts his brows. “Oh? And what did you conclude?”

   “That I’m glad it wasn’t the reverse.” I touch the buttons of his shirt. “I wouldn’t have been as careful, or as kind. I... would… ” Hard hit to his chest with my palm _._ “have,” poke with my index finger, “fucked,” poke, “you,” poke, “UP.” I tilt his chin up and address that reluctant mouth. “And ruined you for everyone that came after.”

   “Oh man, I bet,” he says roughly, like it’s still a possibility. Like I already had.

   “But then I wouldn’t be me, you wouldn’t be you.”

   Oliver bites over his bottom lip, his teeth graze upwards. “No, I suppose not.”

   It doesn’t matter anyway because—and this I don’t say out loud, though I imagine he knows—no matter who we are when we meet, who we were, who we could be, it always leads to us, in some way.

   For someone who claims to be too high to move, he stares at me with unusual focus and I’m about to ask him what’s on his mind when he answers by speaking.

   “Melina Murriali.” Oliver pronounces her name with deliberately sensual Italianate flair and I hate how much I love hearing him say it. “I’ve seen some of her films. Both hers and her parents’. She’s stunning. And talented. How did you meet?”

   Lina, seated across from me, playing with her asparagus, with all the baby-cheeked softness of a woman in a Renoir painting, heaps of messy blonde hair, the mouth of a Sicilian dock worker and a fierce, pliant intellect. Our attraction was immediate. Obvious and overwhelming. By dessert, we were on our host’s rooftop, my head between her thighs, sucking and licking like a drowning man who thinks he’s hungry, not dying.

   “Mutual friends.”

   “You look beautiful together.”

   I sense a trap.

   “You’d look beautiful with anyone.”

   Should I hear this as: you’d look beautiful with me? Or, you looked beautiful with me?

   Oliver tilts his head and bites down on the tip of his now-popped up collar. His tongue darts out to lick it and suddenly, I remember the Montblanc pen that he used to scribble his notes with that summer, the one that was always in his mouth. I found it in the grass by the trough one day and immediately put it in mine, pretending my tongue was his tongue, my teeth his teeth, before putting it back exactly where I’d found it. I nearly came in my pants when later that afternoon he picked the pen up and put it right back in his mouth, thumbing through his Heraclitus without a single clue that he had me on his tongue.

   The things that thrill when we can’t have what we want.

   “We can’t do this,” I say, to his mouth, his tongue, his eyes with their endless lashes.

   “We can’t do this,” he repeats, almost to himself, which may as well be me.

   I’m still so high.

   “I know. Me too.”

   My tongue is too thick for words and it seems unlikely that I’ve spoken out loud, much less made myself understood, though I must have. I move, momentarily burrowing towards his warmth, nuzzling a line from his elbow to his shoulder, before resuming my previous position—flat on my back. I dance, a supine wiggle, using only my arms and he laughs again, lifting his arms like mine so that we can both make shadows on the wall with our hands. Two swans, fingers fanning out to make feathers. The song that’s been playing in the background grows clearer and using my fingers, I separate each note.

   “I think I know what you’re doing,” Oliver breathes and I know he’s talking about the music and my hands.

   His hands peck at mine, opening and closing like duck bills in time to the music. I elbow him away and focus on the sound, the fat wobble of near-flat bass and the singer, insistent and strange. When the guitar becomes a siren, our hands intertwine and the skin of his hand is dry and smooth; his nails, neat and pink and I wonder what it would be like to touch him. His calf. Ribs. The arches of his feet. The round hill of bone at his ankle, prominent and serene.

   He is not mine to touch. Focus on the music.

   “Are these all slow songs? I feel like we’re at the prom. Do they have proms in France?” He laughs as if this is the height of hilarity.

   “We have dances. Do you want to dance?” I direct my question at the wall, I haven’t forgotten the shadows and how I need to shape them.

   “Yes, please. But without getting up.”

   My face does something that makes him laugh, a swooping upwards tee-hee of delight.

   “Not like that, really. Come here.”

   ‘Dancing’ is us on our sides, my hand in his, and instead of swaying, our shoulders shift back and forth like a wobbly playground swing. My head is tucked under his neck and the rasp of his beard is unbearable, an insistent scratching at my forehead. I slip my feet on top of his this time, the smooth skin and veins, familiar like a lost, cherished object, and I shut my eyes as if that could help me from feeling it. I’m struggling to keep my hips at a slight remove, angled out, because that last piece will be my undoing.

   “We’re so lazy,” he sighs.

   “We’re so stoned.”

   Our laughter is champagne-happy, easily bubbling again every time we move, and he knocks into my eye with his chin, which only makes him laugh harder. And, in laughing, he pulls me closer, hands pulling from my elbows to my wrists, and the hitch of his hips against mine is a switch, an irresistible jolt and I forget. I push into it and he gasps. I press my lips to his throat, mouth open, not in a kiss, not with tongue or teeth to bite, but to breathe in his skin through my mouth, to taste it in the air. I push again and he meets the pressure of my hips with his own. I can feel the tap of his cock, hard against mine. Old friends.

   We are both loud, breathing in this empty house. He brings a hand up my back, large and wonderful, to my neck, the back of my head, righting himself to kiss the skin at my hairline, firm and resolved, as in: no further.

   I cast my eyes to his face, at those implacable blue eyes, and there’s a tenderness there when he shakes his head. I push him away and rise to my feet, adjusting my hard-on and wiping my nose with my wrist. Oliver’s hands are up in the air like he’s the victim of a stick-up; hair, messy and slightly wet; pants, tented; but there’s no sense of wrongness to it. There is no predicament. No line has been crossed. We were talking, not fucking.

   It’s idiotic. I hadn’t thought of him as belonging to anyone else but me, not seriously, ever, and of course he belongs to others, the ghost of others and perhaps more. Just as I do. It’s easy, then, to keep looking at him and say, if not with voice, then with whatever’s inside of me to whatever’s inside of him: I am sorry, Oliver. We met at the wrong time, no way around it after all.

   “I need water,” I manage. “I’ll be in the kitchen.”

   My legs are useless to me right now, but I somehow make it down the stairs, and get myself a glass of water the way a sleepwalker might—barely conscious of my movements or why it is that I’m here in the first place. I fight the urge to pour the entire glass of water on my head and instead keep my hands under the tap as it runs, going from cold to freezing, elbows in the sink and palming it, bringing some up to my face and hair. My eyes are closed when I hear him approach.

   “You got anything to eat?” he asks, squinting one eye and scratching the back of his head.

   “I could put something together, or we could go get takeout. There’s not a lot of options close by. But if you don’t mind walking, we can go to Prospect Heights. There's bound to be something open late.”

   “I don’t mind.”

   “Chinese?”

   “Yes, please. Sounds amazing.”

   He slides over to me, socks back on, puts one foot over mine and while I’m busy looking down, slack jawed, he grabs a dish towel and dries my hands and elbows with it, slowing down and stopping after a half a minute.

   “All dry. I’m starving. No one has ever been hungrier than I am right now.”

   I sincerely doubt that.

   “So,” he sighs. “Should we go out into the storm and find some food?”

   “I think so. Let me use the facilities and I’ll go find you some boots. I must have something for you to put on your feet.”

   “My shoes are already ruined. It doesn’t matter.”

   “Okay.”

   The wallpaper in the bathroom is a William Morris reproduction and I can’t remember why I approved it; its fern-like greens feel oppressive in the the tiny space. I hold still, cock in hand, not doing anything, and piss finally, watching the stream of urine steam and bubble on impact.

   At some point, I could have gotten out of this predicament, but I am weak and avoided the exits. I can’t be this close to him and be good. Not now, and definitely not later, when I’m sober and wide awake, moving down the hall to whichever spare room where he’ll also lie, not sleeping. I would make him forget his other life. I would ruin my own. I would love the ruins.

   Sneaky, heartless, cunning boy becomes sneaky, heartless, cunning man. I wash my hands and look at my face. My reflection in the bathroom mirror agrees, even my lips look cruel. I point at myself accusingly, finger hitting the mirror’s surface with a smudgy thud, and whisper, “You still don’t know anything.”

   When I come out, Oliver, stands by the front door holding two large plastic bags with smiley faces on them. I turn around, look towards the kitchen, then up the stairs.

   “How long was I in there?”

   The hall looks exactly the same. Oliver is still shoeless. He’s looking at my feet also and when he glances up, his expression is pure bemusement, but with just a hint, buried under layers of practiced performative polish, of excitement.

   “I don’t know. I have lost all sense of time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Oliver chair, Oliver lamp" is cribbed from Aciman, in a way that is hopefully respectful and not outright thievery.
> 
> Originally, Elio was going to abuse fruit by making an apple bong but I realize that there is no way that Oliver would ever stoop to that level.
> 
> The song Elio bounces around to on the stairs is 'Sunday Girl' by Blondie.
> 
> Vlado Perlemuter and Jacques Rouvier are actual people and one was indeed a student of the other. Rouvier seems like the kind of instructor Elio would have needed in order to have a career. Perlemuter was known for his Ravel work, which he continued to perform live well into his later years. The idea that a young student would sub for a well-known artist has precedent--in 1989, Gil Shaham, then in high school, filled in for Yitzhak Perlman with the London Symphony Orchestra for a three night series.
> 
> The song Elio does shadow puppets to is 'Hey' by The Pixies.
> 
> The song playing when Elio and Oliver “dance” is 'Forbidden Colours' by Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Sylvain.
> 
> "Sneaky, heartless, cunning boy" is probably my favorite Elio-ism from the book. I particularly love the way Armie Hammer reads that line in the audiobook with just the right touch of stern self-admonishment.
> 
> Thank you for reading. I love this dumb chapter. I hope you like it too.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tagged for _Armance_ spoilers and yes, I've never thought this is something I'd have to tag for.

   “Where did you get that?”

   I grab a bag and look inside: Styrofoam containers with rubber bands around them, a quart of something I can’t distinguish, and napkins.

   “Someone was knocking on the door.” Oliver glances at the door for a long moment. “Well, I thought someone was. I went to look and there was a man there, wearing a balaclava. I was fucking terrified.” He turns to me, his laugh brief and manic. “Then he said your name. ‘Elio’. And I said, yes? And he handed me these, got in a car and drove away.”

   He taps my bag with his; a gently, swinging pendulum. I think about the last ten, twenty, thirty minutes—I don’t remember calling anyone.

   “Did... we order? I’m so confused.”

   Oliver’s hand is at his mouth, thumb and forefingers worrying the corners, eyes widening. “Fuck it. Let’s see what we got.”

   We carry the bags to the dining room table and start emptying the contents.

   “2nd Avenue Deli,” Oliver reads from the receipt, “Isn’t that downtown? They came all the way out here? The mystery deepens.”

   He unpacks, one item at a time, announcing each one like it’s a guest at an embassy dinner: Matzo ball soup, pastrami sandwich, second pastrami sandwich, pickles, potato chips, knishes. Finally, we’re left with a table full of food and no answers; we stare at it dumbly.

   “Dafna?” Oliver surmises.

   “No,” I say, stroking my chin, the squeezing my lower lip between my thumb and forefinger. “Clem. My manager.”

   Oliver pops open the soup container and sniffs. “You think?”

   “She said she would, on the phone earlier.”

   That was hours ago. I can feel the high softening and falling away already, sloughing off like bits of a cocoon.

   “Mind if I dig in?” he asks.

   My stomach growls and Oliver raises an eyebrow. “You should too.”

   He walks over to the cabinets and finds a pot, stopping to rinse it, and dries it with a paper towel. “I’m going to heat up the soup, it must be lukewarm. Do you want to try a sandwich in the meantime, or wait—do you have a toaster oven? We can heat up the sandwiches a little.”

   “I have a toaster.”

   “Not the same thing,” the old chiding condescension has mellowed into appreciation somehow.

   The next song is something more lively and Oliver juts his chin out in time to the music, considering the kitchen like it was research he’d neglected. I’m still trying to process the fact that we were seconds away from taking off all of our clothes and going at it and he stopped it. Without explanation, commentary, or seemingly, rancor.

   “We could use the regular oven, but we might forget they’re in there and set the house on fire. So maybe… not.”

   “I don’t mind if the bread is cold.”

   Oliver ignores me, already engaged in his own plan. It’s disorienting, to watch him move around the kitchen, looking for utensils and plates, lining them all up with exacting precision. He must make an excellent husband.

   He folds napkins and puts them on the table. “It doesn’t look like Clem bought your consumptive act. Not only is this way too much food for one person but, aside from the soup, it’s not really food for the sick.”

   “But why would she think I wasn’t alone?” I stretch my arms overhead, grabbing my elbows and twisting.

   Oliver grimaces and rips open a bag of potato chips. “Clem is the tall, handsome woman with red hair?”

   “Yes.”

   “Yeah.” He bites into a chip, chewing contemplatively. “She saw me at the venue. And she was there when you asked me to wait for you. I think she put two and two together.”

   I ball up my hands into fists, bring them up to my mouth and muffle my scream with them. “Why does everyone know everything all of the TIME?”

   Oliver’s laugh is younger than anything I’ve heard tonight and, of course, it would be at my expense.

   “What did you expect? You’ve surrounded yourself with smart cookies. This is both a plus and a minus, I find.”

   He smirks, and I understand then: he’s not worried about any of it. He’s hungry, that is all. This is his most relaxed self, standing in my kitchen in his dress pants and clean white shirt. He’s barely rumpled, not a spot on him, and as graceful as a dancer in a ballet of domesticity; plating our sandwiches, pouring glasses of water and wine, squeezing my shoulder as he walks past. I yield to that touch for the few seconds that I have it.

   Oliver finds a wooden spoon and stirs the soup and, instead of eating my sandwich, I watch him. Obediently open my mouth when he approaches with a spoonful of the stuff and silently urges me to try it, as if he made it himself.

   I nod. “It’s good. Hot.”

   “Great.” He smiles and his happiness hits me like a stone to the chest.

   We eat. I’m slow, he’s faster, sloppier. Nevertheless, his shirt remains white.

   “It’s nice having a kitchen again. I took it for granted.”

   “I barely even use mine.”

   “See, this is the curse of privilege—having Mafalda around prevented you from assuming your fine European culinary birthright.”

   “I can make salad dressing.”

   His snort is ugly and indelicate. Just like his mouth when he chews. That neck, the hair at the base of it, the flop of his large hands, and those changeable eyes that both pierce and absolve. I like him way too much, in a way that almost supersedes desire or love. Almost.

   “You know you can’t live off that, right?” Oliver grabs a napkin and leans over to wipe the corner of my mouth. “Mustard.”

   I love him though. So fiercely, I allowed myself to think of his wife as a construct, fiction, a necessary dramatic device—impossible to hurt or destroy because she’s not fleshed-out enough to be real.

   “Thanks.”

   When I try to remember things he liked about me—found attractive, impossible to resist—so I can use them now, as lure, as bait, I draw a complete blank. He liked all of me once, there’s nothing to isolate.

   “You’re welcome.” Then he grins, crumpling up that napkin and throwing it at my shoulder, where it bounces back to the table. He attacks his sandwich with renewed vigor.

   My soup-sip scalds, I put the spoon down, fanning at my mouth. “Why don’t you have a kitchen?” The burn makes near-gibberish of that last word.

   “We’re selling the house, and Barb wants it to go fast, so the kitchen’s getting remodeled.” He runs his tongue over a molar, like something is stuck there, adding an endearing lisp to his pronunciation of ‘fast’.

   “Oh right, I forgot about your renovation.” Off of his look, I clarify, “You mentioned it earlier tonight. Who’s Barb?”

   He drinks his glass of wine quickly, then looks past me towards the wine rack. “Is there more wine?”

   “Sit. I’ll get it for you.” I go grab another Margaux, and keep an eye on him while he chews, thoughtful and alert. The cork gives with a hollow pop and I pour him a glass.

   “Thank you.”

   “So who is Barb? Your real estate agent?”

   “Barbara. My wife.”

   “Oh.” I sit down, my hand at my neck. “I thought her name was Rachel?”

   He shakes his head. “Why did you think that?”

   “I heard you before, on the phone.”

   “That’s my mother-in-law. What is this song?”

   “Oh, I don’t know the name. The singer is Mary Margaret O’Hara. She’s Canadian and her sister’s a famous actress. That’s all I know.”

   “Huh,” Oliver smiles tightly. “I like it.”

   He finishes eating, stands to clear his dish and wash it. He pours the soup we didn’t finish back in the container. Everything is methodical and pointless.

   “Where are you moving? After you sell your house?”

   “I don’t know. It depends on a few things.”

   “What things?”

   “Personal things.” The emphasis he places on that word—personal. He might as well have slammed a door in my face.

   “Okay.” I push my plate away and reach for a cigarette, smile when he stares at me, hard and defensive. He throws his lighter at me and I catch it.

   “Tell me about your fiancée,” he says, pushing out each word with a light-yet-pointed aggression.

   So he did know. I blow smoke his way. I am a very good host. “I already did.”

   “No, you didn’t. You said you met at a dinner party. That’s it.”

   “You’re right.” I point at him with my cigarette. “How did you meet your wife?”

   Now I’m just being an asshole because, unlike him, I don’t need to know. What bothers me, like an itch turned to hives, is something entirely different.

   “In college. At a party. Years before you.”

   The effort of his answer seems to deflate him. He goes no further.

   “What do you want to know, Elio?”

   Make her real—them—test out that realness, but don’t feel anything.

   “What are her favorite flowers?”

   “Tulips. Mums. I don’t know. She doesn’t have a favorite.”

   “Who is her favorite poet?”

   “Poetry bores her. She likes murder mysteries. Thrillers. I don’t see why this is important.”

   His look is so baleful, I sit up, expecting more than hands-at-his-hips reproach.

   “When did you start seeing her again? The day you landed, when you went out to lunch with your friends?” The cigarette discarded in my water glass hisses in its final agonies. “I’m just curious. As one friend to another.”

   “Late November. We got engaged in December; it was fast. When did you get engaged? Was it also in December? And why? You’re too young to get married.”

   People must indulge in melodrama when they don’t know what outsized feeling to tend. The only thing that might serve is to smash everything on the table and create a riot of noise that matches what’s inside. I do nothing of the sort. My smile is fixed, my cigarette, drowned, and I think, yes, it was also December. Last December, at Christmas, not Hanukkah. And you got married at twenty-five, Oliver. Who are you really scolding?

   Perhaps it is my turn to fade, wilt away into an exhaustion that may as well be sleep. I rub my eyes and when I look up, he is still there, waiting for a response.

   There is no reason for enmity. I want Oliver to be happy. This is truer than any sourness in my stomach at the thought of his other, more successful, adult life. The one that exists outside this room, the one that is immune to my attack. I want his wife to be good, to match his goodness. I want them to be the ideal. Just like, in nearly every single way, Melina is mine.

   “I love Lina,” I say, feeling guilty for the first time tonight.

   “And I love my wife.” There’s a pleading quality to the statement. Which doesn’t make it untrue; just the opposite. I know it is true, it wouldn’t hurt him to say it otherwise.

   “Good.” I mean it. “You should.” Or rather, I’m glad.

   Silence.

   “What does she look like? I’ve always pictured her as the girl from _The Karate Kid._ ”

   “What?” he asks, head snapping in what would appear to be irritation but I know is just surprise.

   “Elisabeth Shue. She was pretty.”

   “She was. No, Barb does not look like the girl from _The Karate Kid_. Elio...” Oliver laughs but it sounds breathless, as if he can’t believe this conversation. “Barb’s tall, athletic, long auburn hair, blue eyes. She’s… stunning, charismatic. Smart.”

   Oliver wife, Oliver life. His _traviamento_ was me.

   “We were very well-matched. Physically. That was never a problem. But also in terms of what we wanted for ourselves and our eventual family. And she truly was the best option for me at the time. There is no one better.”

   I think the way he thinks—or used to—we think like one another, and this is the moment where our eyes would lock across a room and, in them, we’d say, without need for words spoken out loud—what is all this about and why? I feel this now, like he’s giving me too much of an explanation where none was needed at all.

   Oliver comes and sits next to me on the dinner bench, and I pull back from him slightly, his golden heat overwhelming. “I don’t understand. Are we no longer okay?”

   “We’re okay.” I smile to show how okay we are. “Are you moving back to the city? Or further into Connecticut? That’s a long commute.”

   “I hope not. No, I don’t think so.” He scoots even closer. “Why are you unhappy?” He brushes my hair out of my face and I breathe in the way I breathe in right before a blood draw; to make the expected pain smaller. “Is… Melina coming to New York?”

   “Maybe.”

   His mouth settles into a thin line, the edges turning white. I hadn’t allowed myself to look at his face too closely, even when I thought I could pull off a seduction. But here, looking at the composition, up close and creased with worry, it’s impossible to argue with its beauty, especially when he’s miserable. How seeing him in this state still excites me, as if I’m both the sickness and the remedy.

   “Oliver. Tell me whatever it is you’re not telling me. I’m sure it’s not as terrible as you think.”

   He cups his hand, palm up, on the table exposing the lovely pink sheen of his hidden skin. I imagine a pearl there at its center.

   “Barbara and I are separated.”

   That’s terrible news, I almost say, automatically. Because it is, it is, objectively, terrible news.

   Oliver turns his hand over, he still wears his ring, and in light of the news, it looks duller on his finger. Like a prop. He plays with it as he speaks, sliding it on and off his finger. If he were an actor and I, a director, I’d say: Stop. Too much.

   “She met someone last year. Well, met is wrong, they’ve known each other their whole lives. She’d always thought he was too homely for her and I suppose she got over her objections.”

   “She left you?”

   My confusion is acute. The notion of thinking anyone is a better choice than Oliver seems absurd.

   (It should be noted that this very observation is absurd. I should be offended that he didn’t think to tell me, instead I’m his friend, loyal as ever, ready to argue his merits to anyone who’ll listen, praise his every attribute, go to battle if necessary.)

   “Not exactly. Barb is trying to push me into fighting for her.”

   “Why?”

   He rubs his bearded chin with his knuckles. “She used to say she was attracted to my remove until she began to loathe it. She’s right. I love silence much more.”

   When he says ‘silence’, he fixes me with an intense, lambent look, as if I were responsible for all the quiet in the world.

   “If I wanted to, I know I could fix it. It wouldn’t be difficult. I still could and may. I don’t want my son to have two different homes, children need both their parents.”

   I grab a couple of cigarettes from the fuller pack on the table and light them both in my mouth. Handing him one, he smiles in thanks and stands, walking towards the window. I can see his face reflected in it.

   “Why didn’t you say?”

   “I didn’t think you needed to know.”

   He didn’t think I needed to know.

   “I didn’t want you to know,” he clarifies.

   “You didn’t want me to know?”

   This an unexpected inversion.

   “Because it would be too easy for you to think that that was the reason I came to see you tonight. That my marriage is on the rocks and therefore… ”

   The red glow from his cigarette end flares and, after a moment, he exhales, not finishing his previous thought.

   “So that wasn’t the reason you came, then?”

   Must not show confusion. Or anything but acceptance. Keep cool.

   “No. I wanted to see you.” He turns from the window. “I missed you. I wanted to be with you.”

   The admission is simple, inelegant. In voicing it, he pulls a thread from me that threatens to unravels the whole.

   “Now, instead of five years ago?” My voice trembles, like his hands.

   “Since always. I remember everything. About us, that summer.” He shifts on his feet by the window. “I should have waited ten or at least twenty years. But I saw your photo on Monday, like a reminder, and I couldn’t wait. I think… I’m not a good person.”

   Neither am I. I chose him well.

   “You don’t have to explain.”

   “I didn’t want to confuse things,” he goes on, explaining. “I made a choice. There’s an eternal barrier between you and myself. And now you’re engaged so you’ll have it as well.”

   ‘An eternal barrier.’ The term is both familiar and ridiculous. What is an eternal barrier—his marriage? Who the fuck calls it that? I am irrationally angry, not that my feelings are irrational, but that the emotions will lead to irrationality. On the table, there are bits and bits and bits of napkins that I must have torn up as he spoke.

   “‘An eternal barrier between you and myself’?”

   “It’s Stendhal. _Armance_. I always wondered why you gave me that book. I got it eventually.”

   My torso twists towards him, fast and utterly fucking bewildered. “I gave it to you because it’s a _romance_.”

   His smile is small, barely a smile. “A _tragic_ romance—one almost-lover ruled by duty, the other by impulse, the impossibility of all of it. Sound familiar?” He comes back to the table, staying an arm’s width away, and stubs out his cigarette. “The voice of wisdom.”

   “No, I wasn’t.” I laugh because it was pretend, pretend-wisdom cribbed from novels. “There was no message to my gift other than my inscription.”

   “Wasn’t there?”

   “No. I mean, y-y-yes.” My eyes don’t know where to land, I focus on the wall, and bring my hands down on the table, breathing slowly through my nostrils. I speak slowly so he cannot mistake any of it. “Falling in love for the first time and not being aware of it. That is how it was for me, with you. I fell in love with you without realizing I had done so, and there was nothing to which I could compare it.”

   In silence, in summer, all those moments in the grass, under the trees, riding our bikes. The things we assume aren’t happiness because they’re so small—all talk, companionship, being. We disregard it because we think there must be more. But the more, as aching and vibrant as it is, is almost superfluous. We forget those other moments and how they contributed to that first kiss, that first touch to the skin. The conversation about the library at Alexandria, the hand that helped you to your feet, the snickering over some ridiculous variety show performance on TV was all part of this accumulated ecstasy. All of it was happiness. Every single bit.

   “Elio.” Oliver’s voice startles me in its severity. “It doesn’t matter. My coming to see you has nothing to do with the current state of my life. It’s not your job to prod me into a decision. You are not that, to me.”

   The phone rings and I want to rip it out the fucking wall. I walk over to it and pick it up mid-second ring.

   “Putain de merde ! Y'a pas moyen d'avoir la paix deux minutes ?”

   “Tu m’as dit de t’appeler !”

   Fuck. Marzia. I laugh and it’s completely colored with hysteria. I press on, playing with the cord as I speak, willing some light into my voice, some semblance of control.

   “Oh, Marz. Désolé. Je pensais que c’était quelqu’un d’autre.”

   Oliver moves back towards the window, he brings his hand up to his forehead as if he has a headache. I think it must be contagious because my head is pounding.

   “Est-ce que tout va bien ?”

   “Oui, oui.” But I’m really not, and hearing her voice makes my throat constrict.

   “Ça n'a pas l'air d'aller.”

   She’s the only person I could talk to, but I can’t really talk. Oliver’s reflected in the window; hair, forearms, Star. He’s breaking up into pieces, entries in a list of things I can’t forget. I want to say: Marzia, he’s here again and now he’s going. And I think I’ve misread everything.

   Instead it’s, “Non, ça va.”

   “Écoute, s’il y a quelqu’un avec toi et que tu ne peux pas parler, dis... _fradellança._ ”

   The Lombardian word for ‘brotherhood.” I almost laugh. “Fradellança.”

   “Okay. Est-ce que tu es en danger ? Est-ce que tu te sens en danger ? Répond par oui ou par non.”

   “Non, tout va bien. Marzi, dis moi. Est-ce que tu penses toujours que je change d'avis tout le temps, que je suis difficile à suivre ? C'est ce que tu m'as dit une fois. Tu penses toujours que c'est le cas ?”

   They are rushed questions but they ache with importance. Her response is immediate, full of the certainty I've come to rely on.

   “Non, Elio. Tu es constant. Et c'est ça que j’aime chez toi.”

   I’m shivering and/or nodding, it is difficult to distinguish which comes before the other. My parents would chide me, with their usual amusement. Specificity matters, Elio. When I speak again, I don’t recognize my voice, it sounds like a warped record, moving off-speed.

   “Je t’appellerai dans quelques jours. Laisse-moi juste le temps de m’installer à Londres. Okay ? Ne t’inquiète pas.”

   “Tu me fais peur.”

   “Tu n’as pas besoin de t’inquiéter. Je t’aime. Je t’appelle dimanche. Ciao.”

   “Ciao, Elio. Chiamami,” Marzia whispers and I hang up carefully, so that the click doesn’t feel like a bite.

   I have a producer to vet, label offices to visit. I need to meet new collaborators, rehearse for new projects. Finish writing (I will never finish writing). Go to Paris after, see Lina like I promised.

   Oliver waits; he’s been playing a much higher stakes game than I. I should talk about what waits for me in London, be clear about my present life, instead, I’m still half-in the water.

   “So, I am nothing to you.”

   He shakes his head. “That’s not what I said and you know it.”

   “And you and your wife are separated,” I state, to make things plain. “But may reconcile.”

   “Correct. No concrete decisions have been made other than the sale of the house.” he clarifies, because specificity matters. “Turns out we both hate Connecticut.”

   I hold up my chin with my hand, then press my lips against my knuckles.

   “You?” he asks.

   “Lina and I broke off the engagement a couple of weeks ago.” I run my fingers through my hair, smile feebly. “But she called me last night and… yeah. I don’t know.”

   There’s a pained understanding between us.

   “Aren’t we a pair?” I say, after a spell of silence.

   His face. It’s like watching ice splinter. The water underneath must be a certain temperature, get too warm and cracks appear. I saw that in a film.

   Throats are cleared, as officious as a bankers.

   “I need some air.” And with that I go put on some boots, my coat, and grab a pack of cigarettes and lighter from the table. The sliding doors stick but I eventually wiggle them open and step out into the balcony. The cold, bracing and vivid, is enough to change the conversation in my head and I breathe, great, big lungfuls, like a drowning man who has finally made it to shore. The snow falls softer now that the wind has quieted somewhat and in my gratitude, I wish I could kiss it.

   Half a cigarette later, Oliver joins me. Coat and shoes and wariness. I haven’t had a nosebleed in years; I don’t plan to have another. I inhale, flicking ashes down below.

   “Are you okay?”

   I exhale. “I’m great.”

   “I’m amazed you haven’t punched me.”

   “No, why would I do that?”

   “You can if you want.” He looks like he might welcome it.

   “You’d like it too much.” I chuckle joylessly, rubbing my jaw. “Oliver, Oliver, Oliver. Close-reads of _Armance_? Really? It was a send-up. Probably a satire.”

   “It didn’t guide my life. It merely provided context for things I was already thinking. Clearly, I didn’t join a… monastery.”

   “Oh, so now _you’re_ Armance. I see. That’s enlightening.”

   When I was a toddler I used to grind my teeth. My family has told me about it, repeatedly: remember your teeth, Elio; i tuoi denti, ton dents. I never believed it. I am gnashing them now.

   Oliver puts on a pair of black leather gloves, adjusting each finger as if the fit was too tight, and nonsensically, I think: this is the moment he murders me.

   “Did you know that _Armance_ was probably inspired by another novel?” he asks conversationally, in a tone that is blatantly, obnoxiously professorial.

   The snow swirls around us and I shake my head, unaware of where he’s leading me.

   “You didn’t. Huh.” Oliver cups his hands and methodically pushes the snow accumulated on the balcony edge into a snowball. “Claire de Duras was the author. It was quite a literary scandal. It is said that the novel was a veiled portrait of her fellow salon denizen, Astolphe de Custine. In her novel, the main character also has a secret like Stendahl’s Octave, that prevents him from marrying. Lit historians assume that the secret must also be some kind of affliction or injury that resulted in impotence. But there are other scholars that believe that the secret was what actually afflicted de Custine and prevented him from marrying—his homosexuality.”

   “Afflicted,” I snort.

   “Yes.” He packs the snowball tightly, until it’s compact enough to throw in the air and catch. “Do you know the name of Duras’ novel?”

   I shake my head.

   “ _Olivier, ou le secret._ ”

   With great force, he hauls his arm back and throws the snowball towards the tree, one long smooth arc, and it hits the trunk, dispersing on impact.

   “I didn’t know.”

   He laughs. “Right. Because you, who knows nearly everything, doesn’t know that little tidbit.”

   “I didn’t.”

   My tree is shedding bark and the patches of white exposed underneath may as well be skin. From this distance, in this light, it is a body exposed; nude in the storm.

   “So many hypotheticals. I could not get married. You could get divorced.”

   Oliver goes back to packing another snowball. “There are no more hypotheticals for us after tonight. It wouldn’t be fair.”

   Fair. His word choice disappoints me.

   “I have a son. Any hypothetical would have to exclude him, and that’s not possible. He’s my reality.”

   You are my reality. But so is the life I have cultivated. _Traviamenti_ abound.

   “Nothing has changed.” His voice is distant, academic, and while I don’t doubt his belief in the contents of the lesson, I find myself losing focus in his words. He continues, earnestly sincere. “You’re still on one path, a glorious, promising one, and I am locked into another.”

   “Why can’t the paths converge?”

   It’s a simple question. Even, some might say, a fair one.

   “There’s more people for you to meet,” he offers, finally. “People you won’t be able to imagine a life without.”

   “Maybe so.” I think of Lina. Her loud, showing-all-teeth laugh. What she would think of my all but erasing her tonight as if the past two years were less than two days.

   He continues playing with the snow. I don’t have gloves but stick my hand in it anyway, loving the burn. I write an E, then an O, and think of Elektra and Orestes, cowering before the Furies; creators of their own predicament.

   “Well… While we’re on the topic of literary interpretation—don’t you find it interesting that Armance and Octave continually find obstacles to their love? And, while the initial ones are understandable, when they are removed, rather than revel in the possibilities, they find new reasons to say no?”

   My father always tells me I would make a wonderful instructor. You have passion, Elio, as well as intelligence, he says, in his gentle, mellifluous way. This is especially true right now as I pause, carefully considering the words I’m about to say, the weight of them, how they’ll land or hit, before continuing in the same even tone.

   “Do you think it’s because they’re frightened of finally engaging, fully and truthfully, with the enormity of their feelings for one another? That perhaps what follows cannot possibly live up to their expectations, and it’s better to stay suspended in longing until they die of it?”

   I reach above me to a dangling plant holder that hasn’t seen life in years.

   “I’m not afraid.” It’s not a boast. It’s as much an admission of defeat as it is bravery.

   Oliver is incredibly still. “No, you never are.”

   “So you say.”

   For the first time tonight, I feel like I might have the upper hand.

   “Whatever happened to saying things ‘in a way’?”

   Because I, too, can pretend I don’t understand what’s being said, I feign a yawn and shrug. “I’m just talking about a novel, Oliver. A work of _fiction_ unlike—”

   The throw is unexpected, faster than a blink, and it hits me hard in the face.

   “Fils de pute!”

   “Oh, you have no idea.”

   Having the advantage of a ready made arsenal, Oliver pelts me viciously. The neck, chest, back, arm, behind my knee. I know the terrain however, so I run down the metal stairs to the ground level. He chases after me and I throw a handful of snow in his face. The snow splatters and fans out, and since his mouth is open, I can see it on his tongue.

   “You’re gonna fucking get it, you little brat.”

   Oliver pounces on me, grabbing me by the mid-section from behind and lifting me off the ground. I scramble like a wild animal trying to break free and, together, we slip this way and that way in the snow. He digs his fingers into my rib cage and lower, hands curled into claws and, no matter which way I move, I can’t break free. I turn my head to get at him, and he slaps the back of my head with a snowball, says, “Nope, you’re not getting me with that dirty trick again.” I pitch forward and let his own momentum bring us down.

   I am no safer on the ground, but since we’ve rolled over, I have the advantage of being underneath him and just enough time to stuff a handful of snow inside his shirt. His skin is hot and he hisses at the contact, pushing my right cheek into snow with one hand and putting all of his weight on my right arm. I move, uncoiling, and he gasps and lifts up and that’s when I seize my moment: my left hand grabs another fistful of snow and smashes it against his crotch. He yelps and I scramble out from under him, hopping onto my feet.

   Half of my face is numb, but my laughter is loopy and hot; he stands up and faces me. Oliver’s up to his ankles in snow, that beautiful coat is soaked and his poor, poor shoes. I’m laughing so hard and if I could feel my hands, I’d clap them together.

   “You can’t win.”

   He packs and throws a series of snowballs and one gets me in the thigh, another in the ear—the left this time. I’m not as good because mine miss him half the time and he’s fast. He gets closer and closer, snow in both hands and quickly moves behind me to stuff the snow into my sweatpants. It’s freezing but I don’t scream, I bend and take him down again. Oliver hits the ground with a surprised _oof_ that evaporates as soon as I straddle him, grabbing his arms, his wrists, and he fights me, briefly, but we are both exhausted and I slump forward, falling face-first into his shoulder.

   We stay there, wet and breathing until the wind picks up again. I lift my head and the air is shimmering with ice, snow falling from the sky, falling off the trees, swirling around us. Oliver’s eyes are half-lidded, he’s dusted in white, I lean in, my wet hair dangling over his cheeks, his lips. The pressure of his hand at my thigh, sliding up slowly past my hip, to my ribs, fingers outstretched, radiant with warmth. His mouth opens and there are his teeth, tongue. I want to, so badly. I wish I could just take, be the kind of person who would take from him, because right now, I think I could.

   I sit back and scramble off of him and onto my feet, reaching down to help him up.

   “Come on, let’s get dry.”

   Shedding my coat before even going through the door, I grab from the stack of unread _New York Times_ and spread them on the floor for us to stand on and discard our sopping clothes.

   Oliver stands on his patch and wrings out the corner hem of his sweater, the water drips onto the kitchen tile. He looks up, wincing. “Sorry. You got me good.”

   “Can you do me a favor?”

   He stops moving, then after a moment, nods. “Anything.”

   “Talk to me about the first time I told you how I felt. That summer. You say you remember everything, so tell me, exactly.”

   It came out of nowhere, I know it did. I love an ambush, so it feels correct somehow. He closes his eyes.

   “You were wearing a Talking Heads t-shirt. And you were smoking my Gauloises. You had on sunglasses.”

   “Go on.”

   He opens his eyes and wrings more water off of his sweater, only this time he doesn’t follow the path of the drip on the tile. “You were on the other side of the Piave monument—the one we tried to put our arms around, after. I could have pretended not to know what you were talking about, but then you walked up to me.” A note of half-forgotten surprise enters his voice. “You said that there was no one else you could tell.”

   “I did.”

   Oliver brings his hand up to his hair, sweeps it back. He does this twice, it’s a habit of his. “You were swaying in one spot. You were flirting with me.” He shakes his head, raising his eyebrows and inhaling all at once. “And I lost my cool.”

   “You lost your cool? How so?”

   “I followed you instead of saying I had to work.”

   “Ah. You would have lied?” I wiggle out of my wet sweatpants, deliberately messy so as not to seem provocative.

   “Yes.”

   He takes off his socks and the sight of his bare feet, one directed at me, the other slightly off to the right, in the courtier stance of King Louis XIV’s court, ramps up this feeling of hysteria that has gradually been building inside me all night like steam inside a kettle.

   “Good to know.”

   Oliver slips off his sweater, the smell of wet wool heavy in the air, and pulls out his shirt from his pants, and it’s better than madeleines dipped in tea. I don’t need to taste anything to be brought back. Just this: unbuttoned and untucked shirts and Oliver, leaning back slightly like he does when he’s wary.

   He drops the sweater at his feet. “You took me to your reading spot. The water was freezing. You got right in my face and you smiled, like I had something in my teeth but you weren’t going to tell me.”

   “No.” I’m laughing now, even as I’m taking off my shirt.

   “Yes.” He smiles. “We were in the grass, after. Who suggested it?”

   “Nobody. I sat down and then you did. Then I was dizzy so I lay down to look at the sky. So did you.”

   I’m thin, I’ll always be thin, but I have a bit more muscle on me now. I understand that in standing here in front of him, shivering and in my boxers, I’ve crossed the line from undressing right into presentation. Oliver doesn’t look away this time, and his answer is hushed.

   “So did I. It was a beautiful day.”

   “A beautiful day.”

   He unbuttons his shirt, three buttons.

   “In another life, a parallel life, this is not the moment we meet again. I never come to your show, or I leave before you play. Or you never kidnap me and bring me back here.”

   “You offered your car.”

   “I don’t come to see you, I go to California and reclaim my family, bring them back here. Because I could. And everything is fine, because I’m trying, finally, I don’t forget. Barb and I have another child or two. And I become the good husband and father I’ve always wanted to be. And I’m good.”

   “What about me?” I say, wrapping my arms around myself, watching him unbuckle his belt and pull, placing the coil of it gently at his feet.

   “You’d never know, because you’d be busy living your other life. And you’d be this incredible musician-slash-conductor-slash-composer—marrying into French-Italian film royalty, or not. Making decisions that aren’t based on settling.” 

   “Did you settle?”

   “No. I made decisions.” He unzips his pants, pulls them down and steps out of them. He shakes them out, inspecting the damage. “And I am happy with them.”

   “And I wouldn’t hear from you?”

   “No. Not for a while.”

   “But I would hear from you eventually. How long?” His boxers are blue and have little ducks on them. They don’t seem like something he’d buy for himself.

   “Let’s see… we last saw each other in ‘83?”

   I nod.

   “So… how about twenty years later. 2003.”

   “I’ll be 37.” It sounds impossibly ancient.

   “That’s a good age to be. Old enough to own your life. And know what you want.”

   I know what I want; I want his well-loved silence. I don’t want a life without.

   “I don’t want you to wait for anything,” Oliver says, like not-wanting things for someone is a wish easily granted.

   “Maybe I’m meant to.”

   He laughs and rubs his temple. “No.”

   My arms are still wrapped around myself and now my legs are crossed as well, right at the ankle. I bite my lip and breathe through my nose.

   “You should go put on a t-shirt at least.”

   “So should you. Hurry. Bring your wet clothes.”

   We gather everything and run down the hallway, up the stairs. The laundry room has been used once, I think, and not by me. Luckily, Oliver takes initiative; turns on the sink, which clangs and sputters awake, to rinse mud off a few things by hand. I look in the cabinets and find detergent. I place it on top of the washer.

   “I’ll be right back.”

   He nods, sorting our few items.

   I go to my room and grab a towel, remove my underwear and dry where my skin is still cool and damp. I know he won’t follow but I rush anyway, slipping on a pair of green-gray shorts that have seen better days. I grab the biggest t-shirt I have, a Knicks souvenir from two seasons ago, and run back to the laundry room. Oliver is shirtless, in his boxers, peering at the washer knob and then pulling it to start.

   He sees me and I throw the towel and t-shirt at him.

   “Thanks.” He dries, his hair, thighs, under his arms, his chest, before slipping on the shirt. “Just shorts? No other clothes for you?”

   “I’m fine. I have the heat on full blast.”

   I walk over to him and put both my hands on the washer, feel it vibrate under my hands, the warmth of his body next to mine.

   “Love.”

   “What of it?” he says, the hard hit of the _t_ is defensive. I know him, am aware of the hasty wall he puts up before softening, and don’t take it personally.

   “You and I.” I nod. “We loved one another.”

   He frowns a minuscule frown. “Yes.”

   “I felt it, even though I never said it. So I’m sorry if my admission caught you by surprise before. I didn’t intend it that way.”

   His head snaps up. “You didn’t surprise me. You did say it.”

   “What are you talking about? When?”

   He straightens, turning towards me slowly. “That first night we slept together.”

   “No. Impossible.”

   I feel dizzy. Like there’s too much oxygen and not enough lungs to breathe it with.

   “You said a lot of things,” he says, with a light, teasing tone. “I don’t think you were entirely aware of them.”

   “You’ll kill me…”

   “...if you stop.” He finishes with me and his face flushes, not in embarrassment, but arousal. I still recognize the difference. “I remember,” he repeats.

   “I never said ‘I love you’ the first time we slept together.”

   He smiles. “You did.”

   It’s not something I can imagine myself doing. I didn’t even know then what I wanted from him, I didn’t even know if I wanted to sleep with him, much less that I loved him. I didn’t know if I needed more than one night. Even that morning, I was sure there wouldn’t be more.

   “Elio.”

   He’s no longer laughing at me. Now he just seems concerned. How must I look? I know that Oliver wouldn’t lie to me. This isn’t an incidental, misremembered detail. If he says it happened, and has no doubt, then it must have. But I hate that I don’t remember. I hate that my body knew something that my brain hadn’t come to terms with yet. I hate that it told him a secret it didn’t tell me.

   Oliver takes my hand by the wrist, holding it in his open palm as if we were about to waltz.

   “I know talk during sex isn’t always serious. But do you know how happy I was to hear it? Too happy. Overjoyed. I’ve carried it with me. But I don't have to.”

   “Did you say it back?”

   This is important.

   “Yes.”

   Did you mean it? It is too loaded a question to ask.

   Oliver repeats, “Yes,” as if he’d heard me anyway and I step into him without thinking of the trespass. Arms around his neck, fingers digging in there, like a cat kneading its claws into what it loves most. My nose at his chest and I breathe in, rapid and shallow, my face so hot it feels like fire. Oliver smell, wonderful, so wonderful. His arms tighten around me and we stay like this, tender and half-hard, until the washing machine starts clanging and we break apart, him laughing and me, swallowing my contentment, because to let it spill out might mean more loss.

   “Okay, tell me something you don’t remember.”

   He places his hand on my neck, a serious expression on his face that’s tinged with the curl of surprise. He slides his fingers up and up to my jaw and I tilt my head, giving him better access.

   “There was one afternoon. We sat on your piano bench, you played for me—Burt Bacharach a la Beethoven—and I was kissing your neck. Where was everyone? That’s one thing I can’t quite remember.”

   I smile. “That’s because it didn’t happen.”

   “What? Sure it did. I remember.”

   “Okay.” His fingers move to my Adam’s apple, then my sternum. “I remember playing you that song.”

   “See?” He smiles smugly.

   “And kissing. But not on the bench because there was no bench. I had a stool. We couldn’t have both sat on it. Not if I was playing, in any case.”

   “What?” He drops his hand, huffs out a disbelieving laugh.

   “I think we kissed in my bedroom, our bedroom. After. Was that when we talked about doing a library tour?”

   “Yes.”

   “Yes. Mafalda had the afternoon off. She went to the dentist, remember? You were confused because you thought she was seeing the Dantistas, like the ones we saw in July.”

   “Oh my god, that’s right. Well, to be fair, one of them was a dentist and a Dantista.”

   “True, but that wasn’t her dentist.”

   “Pity,” we say, near simultaneously and grin at one another, an old joke.

   “My parents were visiting my aunt that day. They weren’t due back until late. They left us money to go to dinner in Crema.”

   “They did? That was nice of them.”

   “Yes, but you cooked instead.” Emboldened, I grab the edge of his shirt and pull him closer, not flush against me, but close enough to breathe on. “And then we made love again.”

   “But of course.” He doesn’t appear to mind, but I let go of him all the same.

   I continue, warming to the memory of that day. “Anchise never came into the house, so he was probably tooling around in the orchard somewhere. Tending to his grafts.”

   “But there was no bench.”

   “No. There was no bench.”

   He bites the inside of his cheek, and pushes my hair back. “What a trivial thing to rewrite.”

   “Your memory’s staging is better. More cinematic. Either way, it was good.”

   I reach past him to his coat, folded by the sink.

   “Do you want me to put your coat in the dryer for a few minutes? It says dry clean only…”

   “A few minutes won’t hurt. Wait.” Oliver takes it from me and pulls something out from the pocket, a book. He hands it to me. “Here.”

   “What’s this?”

   “A book for you.”

   “ _Houseboat Days_ by John Ashbery. Is he one who wrote _Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror_?”

   “Uh-huh.”

   “I like him.”

   He’s shy again.

   “I thought you might.” He scratches his beard, crossing his arms

   The program from my recital marks a page and I look at the poem hiding behind it.

   “‘Syringa’?” I read out loud. “Is that a city?”

   “No, flowers. Wild lilac.”

   The swatches of light purple flowers visible from my window. We’d kissed there once, in the lilac trees just past our property. One of those kissing sessions that was all spit and sweat, unpretty and feral, and we’d wrapped our hands around each other’s cocks and jerked off into a hollow in that slim, slim tree, feeding it Oliver-Elio Elio-Oliver, whispering into his ear that I’d smell us in the flowers that would bloom the following spring.

   “I smell wild lilac and get hard, still, thinking of us. It’s horribly awkward.”

   He laughs, fondly. Oh, Elio, his laugh seems to say. Like nothing I could ever do would be too sick for him. With him there is no shame, he released me from the burden of it long ago.

   I press the book flat on the washer and read the words slowly, then re-read again. I return to one line, and while there are several worth returning to, this is the one I read out loud. “‘But how late to be regretting all this, even bearing in mind that regrets are always late, too late!’”

   It’s too much for this night. I feel like an alcoholic who’s fallen off the wagon; and finally understands, past the rapidly dimming pleasure, that his misstep is grave as all the pain in the world hits. If Oliver notices, he doesn’t show it. Perhaps he feels it too.

   “It’s a pity that we ever met.”

   “Is it?” Oliver says and swallows.

   “No.”

   My flight is at noon. I’d almost forgotten.

   “Let’s not call it regret, then,” I breathe out shakily.

   “Okay.”

   I close the book and hand it back to him. “Will you inscribe it for me, before I leave for the airport?”

   “Yes,” he promises and I know that he would cut his own hand and hold it to mine to prove that he would.

   “Thank you.”

   I punch his shoulder, lightly, then all the way down his arm. He pretends it hurts.

   “Come. I want to play for you.”

   “Must be two, nearly three AM, you have to be up in a few hours.” He looks at his watch and holds it up to me so I can read it, I take his wrist and cover the watchface, choosing not to know. “You’re not too tired from your recital?”

   I am tired, but for him I’ll play all night, without stopping, until the driver comes to take me to JFK. I’ll play the whole way to London, then back. If he asks, I will. All he has to do is ask.

   Oliver dips his head down, smiling towards his feet.

   I put my fingers to my lips. “I’m happy to play.”

   After I turn off the stereo, we go downstairs, walking at the same stately pace. I sit down at my piano and he stands next to me. I run the back of my fingers on the keys and wait.

   “Any requests?”

   “I loved the Schubert you did. That first section especially.”

   “Which part? This,” I hit the first measure grandly, “Or this?” and speed to the tinkling music-box that comes later.

   “Both.” Oliver places his hand on the piano, his fingers idly tracing the mandolin engraving in the wood. “What made you choose it?”

   “This pianist I admire, Sviatoslav Richter, recorded it. He interprets the tempo—molto moderato—by playing the eighth notes as quarter notes.”

   “I only half understand what you’re saying.” He shakes his head, grinning.

   “It’s slow.”

   “I can’t imagine what you played at a glacial pace.”

   “It goes a little something like this,” I say, before playing the first few minutes at Richterian tempo. I let the last chord hit echo before removing my foot off the pedal abruptly.

   Oliver inhales deeply. “Heavy.”

   “Yes. Solemn and heavy. I always thought that was how it was and I didn’t like it. I was surprised... to find out, that for the first time, I disagreed with an interpretation. Though Richter would argue that his is no interpretation; that he is performing it exactly as Schubert intended. He doesn’t think musicians need to interpret music, not emotionally. He’s a purist.”

   “You like this guy, but he seems the opposite of you.”

   “Yes. I like ‘this guy’. Because while I believe he is sincere about how he approaches performance, that’s not really what I hear when I listen to his recordings. Anyway, the discovery was accidental, I hadn’t attempted the sonata since… ‘86. I picked it up again this summer, for my German friends, and realized I preferred my own take.”

   “So you have your own take.”

   “I think I do. It’s close enough to me to be mine.”

   “It reminded me of that summer. Our summer.”

   “Oh? Why? It’s not even Italian.”

   “Do memories have to be inspired so directly?” He asks, with a single raised eyebrow, and I blush, embarrassed at my simplicity.

   “No, of course not.” I bite my lip, and for the first time my need to confess outweighs my reluctance to come across as I did before: young, stupid, and hopelessly in love with him. “There is a piece that always makes me think―I didn’t even listen to it until a few years ago but it became… yours.”

   “What is it?”

   “‘Gnossienne No. 5’ by Erik Satie.”

   I move over on the bench and motion for him to sit down. He plops down, gangly and loose.

   “Satie. They used his music in that Peter Sellers movie. What is it called… The one about the savant gardener that everyone thinks is a genius but it’s all projection.”

   “ _Being There_?”

   He nods enthusiastically, “You saw it?”

   “No. I read the book.”

   “Of course.” He hits a low E. “You should see it. You’d enjoy it. Oh, and they used Satie in another film I saw recently—Louis Malle’s _My Dinner with Andre_. They use a Satie composition that sounds like going into an art museum to escape a thunderstorm.”

   I laugh. “You mean this,” and sloppily play the first few measures of ‘Gymnopedie No. 1’ and Oliver points at the keys, laughing as well.

   “Yes! How did you know that’s the one I meant?”

   “I’ve seen the film and you’re right, it does.”

   “What did you think of it?”

   “ _My Dinner with Andre_? I loved it.”

   He grins. “Me too. Funny…”

   “What is?”

   “After I saw the movie, I really wished I had your phone number so I could talk to you about it. Not because it reminded me of you particularly but because I wanted to hear what you had to say.” He lifts his eyebrows, looking down at the keys. “Sounds silly, doesn’t it?”

   “Not at all.” I want to tell him, I’ve had the same thought, Oliver. You like the way I say things, I like the way you listen and the reverse, in perpetuity.

   I push against his knee with my own. “Hey. Look. This is a bench, not a stool. We’re sharing it.”

   He bumps into my shoulder, laughing softly, too amused to be offended by my cheap ribbing and plunks out a quick ‘Body and Soul,’ glancing at me sideways as if I’d object. I join him briefly before taking over completely, building a Bach-like improvisation over the melody, bumping his shoulder with mine.

   “Show-off.”

   “So did that happen to you? Did you escape a rainstorm by going into a museum and listening to Satie?”

   “Yes, the Met. I wound up at the Correggio and Carracci exhibition. I thought of Annella.”

   “Mom?”

   He nods, not elaborating on the reason. “So what makes this Gnoss—”

   “-sienne. Gnossiennes. There’s division as to the origin of the term—either it’s a nod to Gnostic mysticism or refers to the excavation in Knossos in 1900 or even the Dryden translation of the Aeneid—”

   “Oh yes, Dryden’s translation.” He raises an eyebrow, his voice dry.

   “You know that, surely. ‘The Gnossian shore’.”

   “Yes, of course, _vaguely_ but I’m a musty Classicist—“

   “Not a true Classicist, Papa would—“

   “Pro would agree. And anyway, you know I’m teasing because I find your mind boggling knowledge of everything impossibly endearing, so yes, continue.”

   He catches me off guard. I can’t think how to respond.

   “The Gnossiennes…” he prompts, hitting an A on the piano as if we’re an out-of-tune orchestra.

   “Gnossienne was simply a classification assigned by Satie. He liked to come up with names for compositions that didn’t fall neatly into the established forms of the time. Like your rainy-day-at-a-museum ‘Gymnopedie No. 1’ we touched on briefly.”

   “So what is it about this piece in particular that makes you think of me?”

   “It’s nothing really. Almost nothing. Just seven notes. And the tempo. And… the key.”

   “Definitely nothing. Seven notes? A ‘little phrase’, Monsieur Swann? Does it ‘sweep over and envelop you’?”

   “‘Like a perfume or a caress?’ A little.” My fingers ghost over the keys without fully pressing down, each one gives with a minute near-muffled _clack_. “Seven notes, like a sigh. They recur throughout the piece. Here, give me your hand.”

   I take his hand and spread out his fingers to play a G chord, then D chord.

   “Repeat that.”

   He does and over it I play the phrase.

   “Perfect.”

   He plays the chords again and so I replay it a little faster.

   “You can be the left hand and I’ll be the right.”

   Once more at the correct tempo, in perfect synchronicity.

   “I guess I’m going on tour with you.”

   “Okay.”

   We smile at each other for an endless moment. I thought I’d memorized his face, but I hadn’t really. I’d lost some of the details. The contentment there.

   “So what is it with the tempo?”

   “Well, it’s poco rallentando, which is a gradual slowing down.”

   “How is that different from ritardando?”

   Oliver grins and scratches his beard. I can’t help it, I scratch the other side, as if he were a large friendly dog.

   “Have you been studying music?”

   “I may have read a thing or two. Here and there. Ritardando, rallentando?”

   “It’s close to ritardando. But the distinction might be that ritardando is a deliberate slowing down, and rallentando is not. It’s an involuntary slowing down. One... gives. Bit by bit until you’re gone.”

   He doesn’t press on what that means with regard to him and I’m grateful.

   “And the key?”

   “G.” I play over on his side. “Same key as an old English folk song we used to know, long ago.”

   I play the plinking notes of Oliver’s favorite from the summer, so beloved it made him stop kissing me to run wildly through the streets of Bergamo, drunkenly chasing the sound. He laughs, recognizing it instantly.

   “The Psychedelic Furs favor that key. There’s another song of theirs that you probably liked—‘The Ghost in You’, also in G.”

   I play it, pianissimo, and Oliver sings along, matching the dynamic. I transition into ‘No. 5’ briefly before waving it away.

   Oliver frowns but smiles also, as if he’s happy but the sun’s too bright in his eyes. “Could you play the beginning of the ‘Gnossienne’ piece? It sounds familiar.”

   I play the beginning, suddenly anxious to not add too much feeling.

   “I’ve heard this before.”

   “There are some good recordings. Reinbert de Leeuw’s is probably my favorite—now there’s an example of how playing a piece slower than the prescribed can be illuminating, I—”

   He points in the air, as if struck suddenly by a thought. “I remember now. I heard this in ‘87, Montreal, Théâtre du Café de la Place. It was _you_ , you played this.”

   “Oh?”

   “It was an encore piece. It was… yeah… I was there for a conference, and I begged off the dinner so I could go see you play.”

   “You were there?”

   “You wore these pool-table-green socks,” he says, with a soft laugh, rubbing the hinge of his bearded jaw with a single index finger.

   “Green is acquiescence.”

   He smiles in his confusion, more handsome in it than others are in certainty. “What?”

   “It was your birthday,” I blurt out, with all the subtlety of a love confession, all love confessions, since time immemorial. No one can remember like I can remember, Oliver—I’m remembering even when I’m trying to forget.

   “It was my birthday,” he repeats and his smile stills as the realization hits. “Was it for me?”

   I nod furiously. He doesn’t ask, how did you remember? Or do you always? Did you know I was there? The answers are: because it is important, yes, and you are always there, Oliver. You are always with me.

   It’s well past midnight, midnight was yesterday and it’s a whole new day. The room is warm, empty and wide. Snow fills up the corners of the windows outside. I know that I can’t return to this house now that he’s been in it. It never felt like I was alone here but now it will. My operatic sentimentalism has never gone away, it grows and grows, big enough to fill houses in every city where I land, but I find I am too full to feel any shame about this observation.

   When Oliver speaks, his voice reverberates in the tips of my fingers. “Can you play it for me again, the ‘Gnossienne No. 5’? If you still know it, that is.”

   I oblige.

   I’m nervous and he’s still on the piano bench but I don’t want him to move, so I begin with him there, at my left elbow and looming. I want him to stay where he is, hamper my movement, force my limbs to adapt to the circumstance. I fall into the tempo, incrementally, as it should be, and each time I hit the part of the piece that is Oliver to me, the tiny melody that bridges one upwards flurry of notes to another, D-B-the tied D-C-D-the drawn out A then B, I inhale, stuttering on the run that comes after, and this, this is me, too.

   It is us. Hesitation, approach, then a breath before full-on capitulation. Or, recapitulation in this case, as the motif returns again and again; and each time means breathing a longer breath, giving in.

   ‘No. 5’ moves with intoxicating pliancy and doesn’t end with finality. It could go on forever, as long we keep following it. That long ago feeling of home to which we are returning. He and I in the sun, in golden, wondrous silence. How I imagine silence really looks. Not as quiet at all, but as a feeling.

   And so it returns, that same little motif, the final breath followed by the slow, slow gauzy surrender. Becoming one person again, unafraid and sure, making the choice to do so—and finally, I’m not alone anymore, because I am him and he is me.

   I have never played this piece better, and doubt I ever could.

   “So whose style was that?” he asks, low and flat. Having turned away to look at the wall, to hide my eyes, I inadvertently missed reading his.

   “Elio’s,” I answer.

   He nods at his hands, folded tightly on his lap.

   “Yours.”

   He looks up, saying nothing and I can hear him perfectly.

   I smile and continue. “Mine.”

   For a moment, he’s younger than I was at seventeen. I bring my hand up to his cheek, thumb at the corner of his lip.

   “Ours.”

   He closes his eyes and moves his lips to my fingers, his beard tickling underneath, and I feel his whispered “Oliver” on my skin, seconds before I hear it, as my own name. He eyes are on me and mine are on his. Oliver. Oliver.

   “Elio,” I answer. Then twice more.

   Down the hall, the telephone rings. Rings and rings. And stops.

   Everything comes in threes.

   What is a body when one is the water? A waterfall, blown so hard by winds that the water flies upwards, returning to the source, defying physics and logic. Standing up slowly, one knee on the bench, rising over him, watching the soft, awed blink of his lashes and the vulnerable set of his face. As if he’s afraid of the deluge even though he’s chosen to die this way.

   That’s it, isn’t it? To be seen, truly seen, by someone; to understand that you are both existing in the same place, without a future or past, in the closest thing to now that we can get in this life. The recognition is there, in the eyes; reflected and returned, from you to them. A living mirror—one that shows your best self only—with the kindest of intentions, the purest of hearts, brave in the face of trouble. And good, so good, even when failing or lost.

   To be with such a person, and know that from here on out, that vision of yourself has to be reality; because to have it reflected so purely means not only is it true, it can and will sustain.

   And they feel the same.

   It is love and, like the water he and I once walked in, it will change—the way it ought to and needs to; with another; a lover; a love.

   This time, he obliges by asking.

   “Please. Kiss me.”

   Oliver tilts his face and sighs into my mouth as I grab his chin and hold us both to the choice.

   It is new but not new, because I have kept the memory of his past kisses inside of me like a reminder. I think: now I won’t need to be reminded, Oliver. You can be here to kiss me tonight and tomorrow, next week and next year. We can kiss in that river of change that you live by, because we can change together, and we never have to fear whether or not we’ll meet again. I can have your lips now, in winter, for the first time. Drag you outside back into the snow, so I can freeze as you kiss me or stay hot, my hands at your hips. We can keep going until it’s spring, which we haven’t had either. Watch things thaw and crack open. Kiss even harder, under leaves that are light young-green and new.

   Oliver is kissing me but I’m already in the future, one with infinite variability.

   “Slow down,” he murmurs, against my lips, his curving up into a smile, as if he’s laughing at me, hands flat and broad at my lower back. I shift down and up and stumble, hitting him on the forehead with my teeth.

   “Ow.”

   “Fuck. I’m sorry.” I kiss his forehead and he closes his eyes.

   Someone grabs someone’s hand; I am not conscious if it’s him or me. But we run up the stairs, holding hands, and then stop in the hallway, pulling each other in different directions. I’m taking him to one of the spare rooms, and he’s dragging me back to mine.

   “But there’s no bed, it’s just a mattress,” I pull him to me, past wrists, the hair of his forearms, elbows, shoulders, and kiss him, sloppy and messy. The tempo changes to a slow, considered wave-grind of hips. Oliver palms the length of my cock, all languid pressure and laughing-low at the strangled noise I make and FINALLY and his arm around my waist to keep me from sliding down to the floor.

   “Thasss okay,” he murmurs into my neck before licking up the side in lazy, meandering way. “I want to be where you sleep.”

   I won’t make it to the bedroom.

   My body slips through his arms, and I’m down on my knees on the hardwood floor, getting one good lick of his cock, twitching past the flap in his duck-patterned boxers,  saliva trail and everything, before he shoves me back, hissing, “Oh no you don’t, not yet,” and lifts me, turning me towards the wall, his body flush at my back. Trapping me there. But when, Oliver? When? God, he’s fucking _huuuuuuuge_.

   I stomp my foot and he smiles against my neck and we slump, rocking slightly, his arm between my head and the wall and my mouth wide open and wet at the juncture of his inner elbow. Turning to face him because there’s enough room now and asking again—When? I am not whining, I do not whine but I am shirtless and he’s all over me and at the same time, waiting. He waits for me to catch up. Because that’s his answer. So I do. At the bend of the road, where the trees overtake. The tenor of our kisses changes, deepens, and his thumb strokes the pulse in my throat, coaxing me into calm.

   When I pull back, I look at him, really look, closer and more patiently than I’ve allowed myself to all night. He’s smiling and—like windblown leaves moving in and out of sun, the dappled light changing their shape and color—his smile changes, from larger to smaller, teeth to closed lips back to teeth, and the joy goes straight into his eyes. And I have to stop staring because I just want to eat that joy—so I close mine—but he presses his lips to my eyelids, gentle and insistent, until I open them again.

   In his presence, I can only be awake.

   We roll along the hallway, different now, in no particular hurry, hands busy but slow, fingers in hair, or flat against the gray wall, accidentally pinching skin as we pull at each other’s clothes, his shirt, my shorts. Not to tear, or undress, but to play with, lift up or lower and feel, pull, cover back up; touch with and without barriers. Today, tonight, tomorrow—in this moment, all that time belongs to us and cannot be rescinded.

   He takes my wrists and presses them against the wall, pushing his knee between my legs as I try and shimmy up his body, and he laughs right into my open mouth.

   I didn’t wear a watch tonight, something told me: don’t.

   Soon is now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand we're done. I was going to wait until tomorrow but I've never been good at waiting. 
> 
> Here is a [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/user/ab9fc23einfyw2njezvth4dao/playlist/3Ei5JO7x9EVMNeO5ICWk41) and a [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWfM4lhzgKQVgxEwlIRKaTKiBFznJClOl) playlist of Elio's random CD shuffle, with a couple of non-shuffle extras. I have a lot of feelings about some of the songs the random feature cruelly selected for this evening ('Long, Long, Long' and 'I Know Very Well...' in particular) but I'll save those for my tumblr.
> 
> My feelings regarding _Armance_ are complex but like Oliver, I do enjoy it despite myself.
> 
> The "little phrase" Oliver refers to is from _À la recherche du temps perdu_ by Marcel Proust. Charles Swann hears "a little phrase" in a piece of music and comes to associate it with his confounding love, Odette de Crécy.
> 
> Here is some complicated fanfic logic: for the 'Gnossiennes: No. 5', I wanted Elio's preferred version to be the ultra-slow original recording by Reinbert de Leeuw from 1977, for Elio's performance of the piece, his interpretation is de Leeuw's 1995 recording of the same piece, a version which is far more assured and tender. So essentially, Elio out-de Leeuws de Leeuw by about six years. But truly, there are a lot of versions of this piece and they are quite different from this one, which is the one I heard when I wrote this. There are more passionate pieces of music, but I specifically wanted something that sounded like gentle, tender remembering and returning-to.
> 
> Théâtre du Café de la Place did exist in 1987, and while it wasn't the large group of venues it is today, there was definitely a concert hall there at the time for Elio to play in.
> 
> For this chapter: a huge thank you to asuralucier for double checking my music theory which is poor and making sure I wasn't telling too-huge a whopper on the poco rall., to Louka and Red-applesith for making sure the French was on point, and to Bryrosea, for her incredible help in this final section, which I sprayed and curled for far too long.
> 
> For the whole thing: thank you to my pals Cheshirecatstrut and SilverLining2k6 who put up with my agonizing and keep me writing. I had a rough time of it of late and you guys were the best. To arbitrarily for the in-depth post-mortems on a couple of the more difficult chapters. To carogables and nightlocktime for telling me that you would read this story, no matter what kind of garbage I posted. I suspect you were humoring me, but I needed it so thank you.
> 
> FINALLY, a very special thank you to ALL OF YOU for reading and following this little story despite not knowing who the hell I was, not having a clue where it was headed because why would I tag a spoiler for the ending lol, and giving it 150+ kudos worth of love. Your kind words have meant the world to me and it's been a blast talking to you in the comments section.
> 
> If you like this fic, please recommend to others!
> 
> Pense-bête shall return with parts I. (Exposition) and parts IV (Coda).

**Author's Note:**

> Gimlet-eyed readers may notice some inconsistencies between this section and the previous section, II. Andante. This is deliberate.
> 
> Rondo is very long so there are many thanks:
> 
> cheshirecatstrut for continuing to sift through all my grammar crimes for a fic in a fandom she has zero familiarity with and listening to a very long, convoluted rant and somehow understanding what I was asking.
> 
> Red-applesith and Louka for providing me with an excellent French translation.
> 
> asuralucier for double checking my music theory and being down to chat about the subtle art of the self-cockblock.
> 
> arbitrarily for the writing inspiration and feedback.
> 
> SilverLining2k6 for flagging all the hot spots.
> 
> Bryrosea for being the usual barometer of what is true and necessary.
> 
> and finally to Carogables and Nightlocktime for the squeeing. 
> 
> *
> 
> Thank you for reading and thank you to those who encouraged me to continue this story.
> 
> Follow me on tumblr: @ghostcat3000


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